Dutch industry will have to fund most of the cost of the transition to a gas-free economy itself, economic affairs minister Eric Wiebes said on Monday.

While the government will support firms with loss making investments to develop more climate friendly processes in the early days, the bulk of the funding will have to come from industry itself, Wiebes is quoted as saying by the Financieele Dagblad.

The minister was speaking at the Industry Day conference at the Tata Steel plant in IJmuiden. ‘The government is not in a position to pay for everything and, if I am honest, the government does not plan to. It can’t and it won’t,’ Wiebes said.

Dutch firms are concerned that they may lose their international competitive position if they have to spend too much money on reducing their consumption of natural gas. The government wants to reduce the emission of carbon-dioxide in the Netherlands by 49% compared with 1990 in 12 years’ time.