The Dutch natural gas company Gasunie and German power concern RWE are to work together on a €100m project to retrieve and store the carbon dioxide released from the new coal-fired power station at Eemshaven.

Meanwhile environment minister Jacqueline Cramer today opened Holland’s first trial with this technique (CCS) at the coal-fired Eon power plant in Rotterdam.
According to today’s Volkskrant, Cramer is to announce the setting up of a taskforce to oversee the large-scale implementation of CCS by 2020 when the technique is expected to be commercially viable.
Environmental group Greenpeace staged a demonstration at the opening of the €2m experimental plant. They say the cost of such experiments would be better spent on developing renewable energy sources.
The retrieval and underground storage of CO2 is lucrative for power producers because these emissions will not count as part of their emission quotas under new European Union regulations.