The thing about intermittent sources is that it's easy to use them for 30-50% of generation, but once they saturate electricity demand during peak production their ability to further curtail emissions drops significantly.
For instance the Netherlands generated 33% electricity from solar during July 2025, but in January 2026 it was only 3%: https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Netherlands/month In practice, this means that ~70% of the daytime energy use is already generated from solar, and another 30% is wind and nuclear. Adding more solar panels will mostly provide more power during the already-saturated periods.
The Netherlands could, in theory store electricity during the summer and consume it in winter. But actually creating energy storage at that vast scale is beyond our capability, short of some technological breakthrough in energy storage.
For instance the Netherlands generated 33% electricity from solar during July 2025, but in January 2026 it was only 3%: https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Netherlands/month In practice, this means that ~70% of the daytime energy use is already generated from solar, and another 30% is wind and nuclear. Adding more solar panels will mostly provide more power during the already-saturated periods.
The Netherlands could, in theory store electricity during the summer and consume it in winter. But actually creating energy storage at that vast scale is beyond our capability, short of some technological breakthrough in energy storage.