Plans to lift restrictions on solar panels on listed buildings will ruin their appearance and endanger their status as Unesco heritage sites, critics have warned.

The owners of listed buildings have to reduce their CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030 and 60% by 2040, the government’s listed buildings department Rijksdienst Cultureel Erfgoed decreed in 2020.

However, plans by Amsterdam’s local council to allow “solar panels in full view on the roofs of all listed buildings from 2025”, are worrying heritage organisations.

The capital has some 9,800 listed buildings, and the canal system and its buildings are on the Unesco protected list. “This could jeopardise its status,” Karel Loeff from heritage organisation Erfgoedvereniging Heemschut told the AD.

“The rules around heritage sites are very strict. It’s about authenticity, including the roof landscape. To put solar panels on them because suddenly it’s all about sustainability is a very serious intervention,” he told the paper.

“It’s clear that there are forces at work in the local council who couldn’t care less. They think it’s only a tourist attraction,” Walther Schoonenberg of the Friends of the Amsterdam city centre association VVAB said.

In a reaction, a spokesman for the council emphasised that any changes to the Unesco site would be discussed with the heritage organisation so as not to affect its  status.

Apart from Amsterdam, other local councils, including Rotterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem and Nijmegen are also relaxing the rules around historic buildings to promote the shift to cleaner energy

Schoonenberg says Amsterdam city centre has plenty of flat roofs that are not visible to the public and can be used to place solar panels. “And why the centre has to carry the bulk of the sustainability drive is unclear. There are lots of other areas in the city which are better placed. But it seems it’s sexier to do it in the centre,” Schoonenberg said.

The Amsterdam canals will not lose their status from one day to the next, Marielies Schelhaas, director of the Dutch Unesco committee, said. “There will be long discussions before that happens. The canals of Amsterdam are  a world heritage site for a reason. They are beautiful and should stay that way.”