During the Urgenda lecture of 3 December I was surprised by the numbers the lecturer mentioned about the CO2 footprint of 1 kWh of electricity of a coal fired energyplant: 500 gr CO2 per kWh! This seemed a lot to me. Especially when you compare it to the exhaust of a windmill which is set on 15 gr/kWh, which is more then 30 times less for the same amount of electricity.
In line with this reasoning I dived into some current developments of these coal-fired energy plants in the Netherlands. On 6 September 2013 the Dutch government along with many other relevant stakeholders presented an Energy Agreement (Energy akkoord) in which the goals for ‘sustainable growth’ were described. One agreement was specifically aimed at closing all pre-1980 coal fired plants before the year 2017.
However, at the same time green light was given to the building and exploitation of 3 new coal plants in the northeast of The Netherlands, Eemshaven and on the Tweede Maasvlakte near Rotterdam. These plants were needed to keep the energy supply affordable, as the large energy producing organisations like EON and Delta claimed (Dijk, 2008)
Most recently research of the Energie Onderzoek Nederland (ECN) calculated the costs of closing the coal fired plants at only 88 cents per month per Dutch household (Menkveld, 2015).
This ECN-report let to a shift in political attitude against coal fired plants and resulted in an amendment that forced all coal fired plants to be closed (with no end date). (Verlaan, 2015). Although this policy change could result in high claims of the energy firms, I am glad to see that there are still parties in the Netherlands that dare to impose against the profit-pursuing energy cooperation’s and see the sense in making this world a cleaner and less CO2-dense place to live in.