In short
- The date people still describe as upcoming has passed. Reference period two began on 1 January 2026.
- The share for cars and vans stayed at 38.5 percent while the definition tightened, so an unchanged number hides a changed rule.
- The next Rbsw date is 31 December 2030, the end of the period. There is no interim filing, return or checkpoint in between.
The next Rbsw date that matters is 31 December 2030, and the date most people are still waiting for has already gone. Reference period two of the Regeling bevordering schone wegvoertuigen opened on 1 January 2026 and runs to the end of 2030. Between those two dates there is nothing to file, no interim return and no checkpoint, which is precisely why it gets forgotten. What has to be true by the closing date is that the vehicles a contracting authority procured in the covered categories across the whole period met the minimum shares, on the tighter definition that took effect at the start of it.
What is the next date that matters?
31 December 2030, the close of reference period two.
That is a long horizon and it invites the wrong instinct, which is to leave it. Vehicle procurement in a public body is lumpy. A single replacement round can account for most of what the organisation buys across a five year window, so the period is usually decided by two or three decisions rather than by a steady rate, and those decisions are made years before the deadline they settle.
What has already happened that people still describe as upcoming?
The start of reference period two, on 1 January 2026, and with it the change that actually matters.
Reference period one ran from 2 August 2021 to 31 December 2025. Period two took over the next day. The switch raised the shares for heavy vehicles and buses and, more consequentially, changed what counts toward the share for cars and vans.
Under period one the 38.5 percent share for cars and light commercial vehicles could be met with low-emission vehicles as well as zero-emission ones. From 1 January 2026 only zero-emission vehicles count toward that share. The percentage on the page did not move, so a briefing note written in 2025 still reads as current and is wrong about the only thing that changed.
What are the dates, in full?
| Date | What happens | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2 August 2021 | Reference period one opens: 38.5 percent for cars and vans including low-emission, 10 percent for heavy vehicles, 45 percent for buses | Historic |
| 31 December 2025 | Reference period one closes | Historic |
| 1 January 2026 | Reference period two opens. Only zero-emission vehicles count toward the 38.5 percent share for cars and vans. Heavy vehicles rise to 15 percent, buses to 65 percent with at least half zero-emission | In force |
| 31 December 2030 | Reference period two closes | The next date |
It is a short list, and that is the finding rather than an omission. The Rbsw has no annual return, no registration, no certification cycle and no rolling deadline. Four dates, three of which are behind us.
What has to be true by 31 December 2030?
That the covered procurement across the period met each category's minimum share.
The shares are 38.5 percent for cars and light commercial vehicles, counting zero-emission vehicles only, 15 percent for heavy vehicles and 65 percent for buses, of which at least half must be zero-emission. They apply to tenders for the purchase, rental and lease of vehicles, and to certain transport services bought in.
Two features of that arithmetic are worth internalising early. It is measured across the period rather than per tender, so a single procurement that falls short is not itself a breach. And it is measured on what you actually procured, so a plan that assumes availability without checking lead times can be correct on paper and wrong at the close.
Which dates get wrongly attached to the Rbsw?
Three, regularly.
30 June. That is the WPM deadline, the annual report on commuting and business travel kilometres filed with RVO by any KvK-registered organisation with 100 or more employees on 1 January of the reporting year. It is a reporting obligation and it has nothing to do with procurement or vehicles. The two get conflated because both are Dutch, both are dated and both involve transport.
The EU threshold values. The duty to tender above those values is ordinary procurement law and it applies whether or not any Rbsw category is in play. It carries no environmental criterion.
1 December 2026. That date belongs to the reporting duty under articles 5 and 6 of the Energy Efficiency Directive for overheidsinstanties. Whether education institutions fall inside that category is genuinely unresolved: RVO's list of those bodies covers Rijk, provinces, municipalities, waterschappen, agentschappen, politie, ZBOs, koepelorganisaties and regionale samenwerkingsorganen, and education is neither named nor excluded. We could not settle it against a source that names education, so we will not attach that date to an education institution in either direction, and it is not an Rbsw date in any case.
What should you actually do between now and 2030?
Four things, in roughly this order.
Count what is in scope. Establish which of your procurements over the period fall into the covered categories at all. In many organisations the honest answer is none, and the exercise ends there.
Rebase the plan on the zero-emission definition. If a fleet plan was written before 2026 against the old counting rule, the number it targets may no longer be the number it achieves.
Front-load the buses. The bus share moved furthest, from 45 to 65 percent with at least half zero-emission, and buses have the longest procurement and infrastructure tail. Charging capacity is usually the constraint rather than the vehicles.
Write the period position down once a year. There is no filing, so nothing prompts you. An organisation that never tallies its own position across the period discovers where it stands in 2030, which is the one year in which nothing can be done about it.
How does it sit next to the obligations you actually report on?
Separately, and it should stay separate.
The Rbsw counts vehicles. It asks nobody to hold a greenhouse gas inventory, to calculate emissions or to report a figure, and it produces no carbon number at any point. WPM asks for kilometres by mode and fuel, not carbon either. Neither of them is a carbon accounting obligation, and a Dutch public body that has both is still not required by law to know its own footprint.
Where measurement earns its place is in the overlap. A fleet transition driven by the Rbsw shows up as a real scope 1 reduction, and the commuting and travel data assembled for WPM is the same data a scope 3 inventory needs for categories 6 and 7. If you are building that once rather than three times, the Hedgehog platform reports 5,000+ users and manages multiple entities and sites with separate data owners. The limitation to weigh before you plan around it: a small business reviewer on G2 in August 2026 said loading the data is manual and takes effort, and that it works well once it is in. Budget for the loading rather than being surprised by it. Where the deeper analysis is the point rather than an annual figure, that is carbon footprint consulting work, and our guide to choosing carbon accounting software covers what to ask before you commit.
Sources: PIANOo, Regeling bevordering schone wegvoertuigen; Rbsw text, BWBR0045768, consolidated version of 1 January 2026; Clean Vehicles Directive 2019/1161; RVO on the rapportageverplichting werkgebonden personenmobiliteit; Hedgehog platform; Hedgehog on G2. Verified 18 September 2026.
Facts on this page were last verified on 2026-09-18.
