19 December 2024
Gas Plant Profile: Nijmegen, the Netherlands
PROJECT: New 500 MW fossil gas plant on a former coal plant site, which it intends to operate until 2045, in contradiction with the Dutch government’s commitment to decarbonise its power system by 2035. Plans to eventually convert it to hydrogen are vague, failing to identify when the switch will be made and where the hydrogen will come from.
LOCATION: Nijmegen, the Netherlands
UTILITY: Engie
STATUS: Approved by the municipal council, awaiting results of a feasibility study. Facing protests by local grassroots activists, who demand a referendum and for the plant to not be built.
The municipal council of the Dutch city of Nijmegen has approved the construction of a new fossil gas plant (500 MW), which the project’s owner – French utility Engie – says it intends to operate until 2045. This directly contradicts the imperative established by the International Energy Agency that advanced economies, including most European countries, should reach ‘overall net-zero emissions electricity’ by 2035 to align with a UN Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5°C trajectory. It also directly contradicts the Dutch government’s commitment to decarbonise its power system by 2035, and the ambitious renewables strategy ENGIE has announced, raising questions about the credibility of their climate commitments.
The utility already produces solar and wind power at the site, which was formerly the location of an Engie-owned coal plant until 2015. The company previously floated plans to transform it into a clean energy hub, but is now pursuing the development of a new fossil gas plant.
On 31 Jan 2024, the Nijmegen municipal council voted against holding a local referendum to consult on the construction of a new gas plant. The project can move forward, pending the results of a feasibility study.
Engie says it plans for the plant to run on green hydrogen in the future but admits the infrastructure to enable this does not exist. Engie has given no guarantees that this new fossil gas plant would stop burning fossil gas by 2035 by either retiring it or converting it to run on green hydrogen.
Hydrogen is expensive to produce, meaning it cannot compete with the mature renewable technologies (wind and solar) that have been deployed successfully in the Dutch power sector over the past decade, and will not replace coal and gas as baseload. Furthermore, the perspective of hydrogen as an electricity storage mode and peaker fuel is hindered by the low efficiency of the process, when alternatives such as batteries present far better performances. There are harder to decarbonise sectors where renewable hydrogen will play a key role such as steel-making or heavy-duty transportation, but the power sector isn’t one of them. Given the unrealistically high number of plans across many sectors to use green hydrogen, and how far away Europe is from having a sufficiently large green hydrogen supply, it is likely that the plant would not run on green hydrogen by 2035.
The Netherlands is transitioning to a renewables-based power system. Its National Energy and Climate Plan includes the target of 95.5 percent renewable share of the power mix by 2040. Wind and solar are soaring, the Netherlands is on track to exit coal by 2029, and gas will be next. Investments should focus on expanding renewables-based technologies: solar, wind, heat pumps and battery storage, as well as grids. A new fossil gas plant could undermine this progress, particularly because the Netherlands has no plant-by-plant roadmap to guide the decrease of its gas fleet.
Extinction Rebellion has been organising a series of protests against the power plant project. In January 2024, 101 people were arrested after they organised a sit-in which blocked a major street. The group requested the municipal council to organize a referendum before allowing Engie to build the plant, which was again at a protest in June 2024, when a bridge was subsequently blocked.