The cabinet has allocated €62m to provide subsidies for the installation of appliances which create clean energy, such as solar boilers and heat pumps, economic affairs minister Maria van der Hoeven told the free newspaper Spits.

The money will help 70,000 households purchase the systems by 2011 – the subsidy for buying a solar boiler is €600. The decision to provide subsidies for solar energy is a change in policy – in 2003 the cabinet scrapped subsidies for domestic solar panels.