Comparison sites will tell you what a Dutch energy contract costs. They will not tell you what it obliges you to do. For a business that gap matters: almost every protection a Dutch household enjoys falls away once the connection crosses a technical threshold, and what you sign is an ordinary commercial contract on the supplier’s own terms. This guide sets out the framework in force on 30 August 2026, the parties you are really contracting with, and the clauses that generate disputes.
The dividing line: small connection or large connection
Dutch energy law distinguishes primarily between connections, not between consumers and companies. A small connection is an electricity connection up to and including 3×80 ampere, or a gas connection up to and including type G25. Anything larger places you outside the regulated retail regime almost entirely.
This surprises foreign buyers. A Dutch shop on a small connection keeps statutory rights: a choice between fixed, variable and dynamic contracts, a standardised model contract, protection against disconnection, and tariffs the Autoriteit Consument en Markt (ACM) requires to be reasonable. On a large connection those rights largely disappear: prices are freely negotiated, there is no model contract, and no reasonableness test on the supply price.
A narrower category sits alongside it. A micro-enterprise, meaning fewer than ten employees and turnover or balance sheet total below EUR 2 million, keeps the right to annul a contract obtained through misleading sales and the capped method for calculating early termination charges. Most international companies buying energy here are neither micro-enterprises nor small-connection customers, and their position rests on the contract alone.
Four counterparties, and at least two bills
A Dutch business energy arrangement involves several structurally separate relationships.
- The supplier (leverancier) sells the commodity. This is the only genuinely negotiable contract in the set.
- The grid operator (netbeheerder) owns the physical connection and transports the energy. You cannot choose it; it follows your location. The connection and transport agreement is a separate contract on regulated terms and regulated tariffs, and is not negotiable in any meaningful sense.
- The balancing responsible party (programmaverantwoordelijke) submits energy programmes and carries responsibility for deviations between forecast and actual offtake. Usually the supplier takes this role, but it can be split off, and the imbalance exposure moves with it.
- The metering company (meetbedrijf). For large connections metering is a competitive service, contracted with a recognised metering company and charged separately.
So a business receives at least two invoices, and often three or four. New subsidiaries routinely take the supplier’s quoted price for the all-in cost of energy. It is not: grid charges on a large connection are substantial, capacity-driven and outside the supplier’s control. Budget the streams separately.
The Energiewet: the framework now in force
The Energiewet replaced the Elektriciteitswet 1998 and the Gaswet. It was published in the Staatsblad on 23 January 2025 and entered into force in stages during that year, the final step being the repeal of both older statutes with effect from 1 January 2026 and the entry into force of the Energiebesluit alongside the Act. The applicable framework is now the Energiewet, the Energiebesluit, the Energieregeling and the ACM’s energy codes, read with the underlying EU market rules.
Three features matter for business customers. First, the licence regime is asymmetric: a supply licence is required to serve small-connection customers, but supply to large consumers requires none at all, the exemptions resting on article 2.17 Energiewet. The counterparty selling you tens of gigawatt hours may face less regulatory vetting than the one selling to a corner shop, so its creditworthiness is your own due diligence problem.
Second, contract information duties are graded. The Act requires clear pre-contractual and contractual information, but the detailed regime, including the contract summary, the model contract and price change notification, is built around small-connection customers and micro-enterprises. Larger customers get clarity by negotiating for it.
Third, ACM supervision has limits. It supervises suppliers and grid operators and enforces the codes, but it does not police the price charged to a large business customer and is not a general complaints body for commercial disputes; article 2.7 Energiewet marks out the rights business end-users do have.
Contract types and where the price risk sits
Commercial labels differ between suppliers; the risk allocation does not.
| Structure | How the price is set | Who carries price risk | Main exposure for the buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed price | One price per kWh or m³ for the term | Supplier, within the agreed volume band | Volume tolerances, early termination charges, lock-in if the market falls |
| Variable | Supplier resets the price periodically on notice | Shared, but the supplier controls the mechanism | Opaque pricing; the change clause is often a discretion, not a formula |
| Dynamic or hourly | Follows the day-ahead or intraday wholesale market, plus a fee | Entirely the customer | Full spot volatility, including negative prices; no ceiling |
| Click or tranche | Volume fixed in instalments the customer times | Transferred to the supplier as tranches are clicked | Unclicked volume settles at market; missed deadlines |
| Power purchase agreement | Long-term bilateral purchase from a named asset | Allocated by negotiation | Volume and profile risk from an intermittent asset |
The point most often missed is that a dynamic contract is not a cheap contract. It is one in which you have agreed to buy at whatever the market does, with the supplier’s margin as the fee. Every hedging decision, and every consequence of not hedging, is yours: for a manufacturer with concentrated daytime load, a treasury exposure, not a procurement choice.
Volume commitments, take-or-pay and profile risk
This is where Dutch business energy disputes actually begin. A fixed price is quoted against a forecast annual volume and consumption pattern, and the supplier hedges against it. If consumption departs from the forecast the hedge no longer matches, and the contract decides who pays.
- Volume tolerance bands. The fixed price holds only while offtake stays within a percentage band around forecast. Outside it, volume is repriced at market, often asymmetrically, so you pay the worse of market and contract price either way.
- Take-or-pay. A minimum volume payable whether or not consumed. Ordinary in industrial gas supply, and unforgiving if a plant closes mid-term.
- Profile or shape risk. Even at the right annual volume, changing when you consume alters the cost of the hedge. Moving production to nights, adding a battery or installing rooftop solar can each breach a shape assumption you did not know you had given.
Balancing responsibility and imbalance costs
Every connection must be covered by a balancing responsible party. Where the supplier holds that role it nominates your offtake and absorbs ordinary deviations, priced into your tariff within limits the contract sets. Watch for pass-through of imbalance cost where deviation exceeds a threshold or is attributable to your side: a generation unit tripping, a large flexible load switched without notice, or a failure to supply forecast data. Sites with on-site generation, batteries or fleet charging are most exposed. If you take balancing responsibility yourself, you assume direct exposure to imbalance prices, which are volatile by design.
The connection and transport agreement
The grid contract is a different animal. Terms and tariffs are regulated, the grid operator is a local monopolist, and there is nothing meaningful to negotiate. What you control is contracted capacity.
On a large connection much of the grid bill is a capacity charge based on contracted transport capacity, plus a standing charge and metering charges, rather than on kilowatt hours. Over-contracting is a permanent, invisible cost. Under-contracting is worse: exceeding contracted capacity typically triggers a recalculation or surcharge, and repeated exceedance can see the capacity reset upward. Review peak demand annually, and treat any new load, whether a heat pump, a chiller or a charging hub, as a capacity question before it is a supply question.
One point is specific to the Netherlands in 2026: grid congestion is widespread, so a new or increased connection can face a long wait, while congestion management arrangements may pay you to shift load off peak. Compensation for long outages is fixed in the grid codes, at higher amounts for larger connections. Those codes were recast under the Energiewet on 21 February 2026: the Aansluit- en transportcode gas DSB replaced the Aansluit- en transportcode gas RNB, and the Systeemcode elektriciteit 2026 replaced the Netcode elektriciteit. For gas the code sets, for an interruption of four to eight hours, EUR 35 for a small consumer, EUR 195 for a profile-metered large consumer and EUR 910 for a telemetry-metered large consumer, with a further EUR 20, EUR 100 or EUR 500 for each additional four hours. The electricity schedule the ACM published for 2026 follows the same pattern, at EUR 35 for a connection up to 3x25A and EUR 195 for one from 3x35A to 3x80A. Check the schedule your own network operator publishes for your connection category, because the band you fall into decides the figure.
Termination, switching and early termination charges
A fixed-term business supply contract runs to its end date, and many renew automatically for a further fixed period unless notice is given in a defined window. Missing that window is the commonest avoidable problem we see.
The statutory protection is narrow. The regulated calculation of an early termination charge, and the one-month maximum notice period, are built for consumers and micro-enterprises: the charge is broadly the supplier’s loss, being remaining volume multiplied by the difference between the contract price and the current price for an equivalent contract, and is nil where the current price is equal or higher. A large business customer gets none of that. Its charge is whatever the contract says, is not capped, and may be a lump sum, a percentage, or a full mark-to-market claim including margin for the remaining term. Negotiate the formula, not the headline price, and secure a right to see the calculation. Switching runs smoothly through grid data processes, but an early switch does not extinguish liability under the contract you left.
When the supplier fails
The energy crisis put several Dutch suppliers out of business, and what happens next depends on your connection. Small-connection customers sit behind a statutory safety net: emergency supply is compulsory, so if a licence holder fails the ACM designates one or more licensed suppliers who take over supply by operation of law for at most thirty days, after which the customer switches. A large business customer has no equivalent guarantee. If your supplier defaults you must find a replacement at short notice, in whatever market conditions caused the default; deposits and prepayments rank as ordinary insolvency claims.
Mitigate this before signing: check financial standing and group structure, consider a parent guarantee running to you, avoid concentrating all volume with a thinly capitalised supplier, and keep a standby arrangement identified. The Energiewet provides no compulsory emergency supply for large connections, so security of supply has to be arranged by contract, through a fallback supply agreement or step-in rights. Left without a contracted supplier, a large user is exposed to disconnection by the system operator, which is entitled to cut the connection to protect the stability of the network.
Force majeure, change in law and price revision
Post-crisis Dutch supply contracts are drafted defensively, and the defence runs one way. Read three clause families together.
Force majeure. Dutch law recognises non-attributable failure, but the contract defines the events, and suppliers commonly extend the definition to wholesale market disruption, upstream counterparty default or the unavailability of hedging, far broader than the general law would give them. Check whether the consequence is suspension, price adjustment or termination, and whether you may exit if suspension persists.
Change in law and change in cost. Pass-through of new levies, taxes and network charges is defensible; pass-through of anything the supplier chooses to call regulatory is not. Limit the clause to charges imposed by public authority, make it symmetrical so reductions reach you, and require evidence.
Hardship and price revision. Renegotiation and unilateral revision clauses have become common in longer-term industrial contracts. Where the supplier may revise the price you need a matching right to reject and terminate without charge; otherwise a fixed price is fixed only while the supplier finds it convenient. The general law of unforeseen circumstances under the Dutch Civil Code sets a demanding threshold, and a drafted mechanism usually displaces it.
Green energy and guarantees of origin
A green contract in the Netherlands is a certificate arrangement. The electrons reaching your site are indistinguishable from anyone else’s; the supply is renewable because guarantees of origin have been cancelled on your behalf in the national register, operated by VertiCer B.V. (formerly CertiQ), the body formed on 1 January 2023 by the merger of CertiQ and Vertogas, which issues, transfers and cancels the guarantees of origin for every renewable energy carrier
If your group makes public sustainability claims, the detail matters. Specify the technology, country of production and vintage year of the certificates, and require evidence of cancellation. Distant, old-vintage certificates are cheap for a reason. Where the objective is additionality, a power purchase agreement linked to a named asset is the right instrument, not a green tariff.
Security, credit checks and prepayment
Suppliers credit-assess business customers and price or secure accordingly. A newly incorporated Dutch subsidiary with no trading history should expect to be asked for a bank guarantee, a parent company guarantee, an advance payment or a deposit. Security should be capped and time-limited and should fall away as payment history builds; open-ended parent guarantees are too often accepted unchallenged. Many contracts also let the supplier demand more security mid-term if its credit view changes, sometimes with suspension of supply as the sanction. Bound that right: define the trigger, cap the amount and require notice and a cure period.
Disputes: what the ACM can and cannot do
Under art. 5.4 Energiewet the ACM has a binding dispute settlement power between business network users and system operators: it decides disputes on the application of the Energiewet, after a written complaint to the grid operator, in principle within two months. That route is open to businesses and genuinely useful for connection, capacity and grid tariff disputes.
It is not a route for a dispute with your supplier about price, volume or termination. There the options are the Geschillencommissie Energie Zakelijk, which handles business disputes on connection, supply and tariffs but only against affiliated companies and only where the financial interest does not exceed EUR 50,000, or the ordinary civil courts. Given the sums in an industrial supply contract, that ceiling sends most serious disputes to the Rechtbank.
General terms and the battle of forms
Supply contracts are short; the general terms behind them are not. Dutch suppliers use industry conditions for business customers, supplemented by their own. If your purchase order carries your own conditions you have a battle of forms, and Dutch law resolves it by a first-shot rule: the terms referred to first prevail unless the second set expressly rejects the first. An express rejection in your order is therefore the operative step, not a formality.
Ask for the general conditions before signing, since terms not made available in good time may be open to annulment. And read the priority clause: where the confirmation, the conditions and an annex conflict, precedence decides which price and volume band govern.
Checklist before signing
- Confirm whether the connection is small or large, and therefore which regime applies at all.
- Obtain the grid, metering and balancing terms too, and model total cost, not the quoted commodity price.
- Check the forecast volume and profile against real, forward-looking consumption, and read the volume tolerance and take-or-pay clause against a closure or an efficiency programme. If the supplier may reprice at its own valuation, require a defined market reference and sight of the calculation.
- Establish where imbalance cost can be passed through, and verify contracted capacity against measured peak demand and planned new load.
- Diarise the notice window, and calculate the early termination charge on the contract’s own formula.
- Test the change in law, hardship and price revision clauses for symmetry and a matching exit right, and assess what happens if the supplier fails.
- For green supply, specify technology, country and vintage, and require evidence of cancellation.
- Cap any security you give, and expressly reject the counterparty’s general conditions if you intend your own to apply.
Does Dutch consumer protection apply to my company’s energy contract?
Almost certainly not. The protective regime is built around small connections, up to 3×80 ampere for electricity or type G25 for gas, with a narrower set of rights for micro-enterprises of fewer than ten employees and under EUR 2 million turnover or balance sheet total. On a large connection you negotiate freely, and the contract rather than the statute determines price, volume, termination and remedies.
Which law governs energy supply in the Netherlands now?
The Energiewet, with the Energiebesluit, the Energieregeling and the ACM’s energy codes. It was published in January 2025 and phased in during that year; the Elektriciteitswet 1998 and the Gaswet were repealed with effect from 1 January 2026. Contracts still referring to the repealed statutes should be reviewed, although existing supply agreements remain valid.
Why do I receive two energy bills?
Because you have two contracts. The supplier invoices for the commodity under a negotiated agreement; the grid operator invoices for connection and transport on regulated terms you cannot negotiate. Large connections may also receive separate metering and balancing charges. Only the supplier’s element is open to competitive tendering.
Is a dynamic contract cheaper than a fixed one?
Sometimes, and never reliably. A dynamic or hourly contract passes the wholesale price straight through, so the customer carries the entire price risk with no ceiling, including negative and extreme prices. It suits businesses that can genuinely shift load and absorb volatility on the balance sheet. It is less a procurement decision than a treasury one.
What happens if we use much less energy than forecast?
That depends on the volume clause. Most fixed-price contracts hold the price only within a tolerance band around forecast volume and profile; outside it the shortfall is settled at market, often on terms favourable to the supplier, and gas contracts may impose a take-or-pay minimum regardless of consumption. Closures and efficiency projects are the usual triggers.
Can we terminate a business energy contract early?
Only on the contract’s own terms. The capped statutory calculation of an early termination charge applies to consumers and micro-enterprises, not to larger business customers, whose charge is whatever was agreed and can reach the supplier’s full mark-to-market loss for the remaining term. Check the notice window and the formula before signing, and again before serving notice.
Law & More advises international companies in Eindhoven and Amsterdam on energy supply contracts, grid and connection issues, and energy disputes. If you would like a contract reviewed before signature, we are glad to help.
