Delays Overshadow $643 Million Waste-to-Energy Project in Netherlands

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--A final investment decision for a proposed 600 million-euro (US$643 million) waste-to-energy plant in Limburg, Netherlands, may be delayed following local council objections.

The FUREC (Fuse-Reuse-Recycle) project by Germany's RWE AG (Essen, Germany) is to be located at the Chemelot industrial park and is key to reducing emissions from the facility. The plant is expected to produce 54,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year, similar to what would be produced by a 700-megawatt (MW) offshore windfarm powering electrolysers. As part of the project, RWE is planning to build a pre-treatment plant in Zevenellen, about 40 kilometers away, to convert non-recyclable municipal solid waste (MSW) into solid recovered fuel pellets. The plant will process about 700,000 tonnes of MSW per year, of which about 50% will be textiles and paper, equivalent to the amount of MSW produced by approximately 2 million people annually. The feedstock pellets from the pre-treatment plant will then be converted into hydrogen at the Chemelot plant.

However, the local council has gone against government advice about accepting a single environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project as a whole and is calling for a separate EIA for the pre-treatment plant in Zevenellen. This is a U-turn from its previous position earlier in the year when it indicated that a single report would suffice. This could delay any final investment decision until next year.

FUREC will reduce the use of natural gas at Chemelot by more than 280 million cubic meters (m3) per year which corresponds to half of the annual domestic gas consumption in Limburg. It would lead to a CO2 reduction of 400,000 tonnes per year. RWE is also seeking permission to build a carbon capture plant at Chemelot to capture CO2 released during the production of hydrogen, which will be either stored or used as a raw material in the future. Alongside local sales of hydrogen at Chemelot, the hydrogen can eventually be transported for use by industry in Rotterdam and the German Ruhr area.

The project has already received significant backing from the European Union's Innovation Fund to the tune of 108 million euro (US$116 million). At the time, Roger Miesen, chief executive officer of RWE Generation SE, said: "FUREC is a prime example of the circular economy at its best, using waste to produce hydrogen. The funding commitment from the EU Innovation Fund proves us right and underlines that RWE can make an important contribution to the decarbonisation of the economy with our project. For the chemical industry, hydrogen offers a great potential to make the production process of raw materials more sustainable."

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