District heating (stadsverwarming) in the Netherlands: what it means for your energy contract

If you have just moved into a newly built flat in Amsterdam, Utrecht or Almere, you may have discovered something the rental listing did not spell out: there is no boiler in the cupboard, in some cases no gas hob, and no obvious way to pick a heating supplier. Your heat arrives ready-made, through a pipe, from a company you did not choose and cannot replace. In Dutch this is called stadsverwarming (district heating), delivered through a warmtenet (heat network).

For people used to a market where you switch supplier to get a better deal, this feels wrong – and it raises an obvious worry. If you cannot walk away, what stops the heat company charging whatever it likes? The short answer is that Dutch law does: heat tariffs are capped every year by the regulator. The longer answer, below, covers how to tell whether you are on a heat network, how heat is billed, what protection you actually have, and the one part of your energy bill you are still completely free to shop around for.

What a heat network is, and how to tell if your home is on one

A heat network is a system of insulated underground pipes carrying hot water from a central source – a waste-to-energy plant, an industrial site, a geothermal source or a heat pump installation – into individual buildings. Instead of each home burning gas in its own cv-ketel (central heating boiler), the heat is produced once, centrally, and distributed.

The tell-tale signs in your home are straightforward. There is no boiler and no flue. Instead you will find an afleverset – a delivery set, usually a wall-mounted unit roughly the size of a boiler, containing a heat exchanger and a heat meter. It supplies both your radiators or underfloor heating and, in most cases, your hot tap water. Your bill will show consumption in gigajoules (GJ) rather than cubic metres of gas. And you will have a contract with a heat company rather than an energy supplier of your choosing.

If you are unsure, check your tenancy or purchase documents for the words warmtelevering or stadsverwarming, look at the unit itself, or ask the landlord or the VvE (owners’ association). Many newer developments are built without a gas connection at all, which makes district heating the default rather than an option.

Why you cannot choose your heat supplier

Electricity and gas in the Netherlands are supplied over shared national networks that any licensed supplier can use, which is why you can switch freely. Heat is different: hot water cannot be shipped economically over long distances, so each heat network is a physical local monopoly. Whoever built and operates the pipes in your neighbourhood is the only party that can deliver heat to your radiators.

So households connected to a heat network cannot choose their heat supplier. There is no switching, no comparison, no annual shopping around for heat. This is not a gap in the market that a comparison site can fill; it is how the physical infrastructure works.

If you can’t choose, can they charge what they like?

No. This is the point most newcomers miss, and it is the reassuring one.

Because there is no competition to discipline prices, heat supply is regulated under the Warmtewet (Heat Act). Every year the ACM – the Autoriteit Consument & Markt, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets – sets maximum tariffs that heat suppliers may charge household customers. A supplier may charge less than the maximum. It may not charge more.

For 2026, the ACM has set the maximum variable tariff at €40.97 per gigajoule, down from €43.79, and maximum fixed costs at €827.91 per year, up from €760.77. These are ceilings for 2026 as set by the ACM, not the price any particular supplier charges – your own contract may sit below them.

The ceilings are calculated using the niet-meer-dan-anders principle, best translated as “no more than otherwise”: households on a heat network should not pay more than they would have paid heating the same home with a gas boiler. To work that out, the ACM uses average gas prices from fixed contracts – since this year measured at three reference moments, in September, October and November – plus the average maintenance and depreciation costs of a cv-ketel, system costs and meter tariffs.

Two things follow. First, the cap is tied to gas prices, so it moves as the gas market moves, which is why the variable tariff has fallen for 2026 while the fixed component has risen. Second, whether a heat network works out cheaper or more expensive than gas in your specific home depends on your consumption, your building and your supplier’s actual tariff – the principle sets a reference point, not a promise. The full decision is published on the ACM’s website.

How heat is billed: gigajoules, fixed costs and the delivery set

Heat is measured and billed in gigajoules, a unit of energy – not in cubic metres like gas or kilowatt hours like electricity. Your heat meter records how much energy your home has drawn, and you pay the variable tariff per GJ consumed.

Alongside that sits the fixed annual charge, which covers the standing costs of your connection and equipment. This is why a heat bill can look surprisingly high even in a well-insulated flat that uses very little heat: a substantial part of it does not vary with what you use. Exactly how suppliers itemise the fixed element on the invoice differs between companies, so read your annual statement (jaarafrekening) against the ACM ceilings rather than against another household’s bill. It is worth understanding how the various components of a Dutch energy bill fit together before concluding you are being overcharged.

What you can choose: your electricity supplier

Here is the part that genuinely matters commercially. Being on a heat network says nothing about your electricity. Electricity still reaches your home over the public grid, and you remain entirely free to choose and switch your electricity supplier, at any time, as often as you like.

For a heat-network household this is the only competitive part of the energy bill – and in an all-electric flat with induction cooking, it is often the larger part. Rates, contract lengths and fixed standing charges differ substantially between suppliers, so comparing electricity providers is the one exercise that still changes what you pay. Note that grid operator costs (netbeheerkosten) are billed through your supplier but are identical for every supplier at your address – they are set by your regional netbeheerder, so they are not a point of difference when comparing offers.

Moving into or out of a heat-network home

When you move into a home connected to a heat network, you do not sign up with a heat supplier of your choice; you register with the one that serves the building, and the landlord, developer or VvE will tell you which one. Take a reading of the heat meter on the day you move in and again on the day you leave, exactly as you would with gas and electricity. When you move out, cancel the heat contract for your old address and register at the new one – the heat contract does not travel with you, and neither does the tariff.

Your electricity supply is a separate matter and follows the ordinary rules for arranging energy around a move, including the switching and cooling-off rights you have as a consumer.

Cooking on gas

District heating does not always mean a gas-free home. Some homes on a heat network still have a gas connection used only for cooking. If yours does, you will receive a gas bill as well – typically small in volume, but with its own fixed charges – and you can choose your gas supplier in the normal way, usually bundled with electricity from the same supplier.

Frequently asked questions