The Netherlands is on the verge of getting its first factory to produce bio-kerosene, an alternative fuel to tradition kerosene and made out of biomass, the AD said on Tuesday. A location for the plant has not yet been confirmed but Groningen is on the shortlist, the paper said. The plans have been confirmed by Maarten van Dijk, director of SkyNRG, which will build the factory. 'We are in the last phase of selecting the location and suppliers. I think that we will be able to reveal more at the end of this year or beginning of the next,' he told the paper. Rotterdam and Amsterdam are being considered as alternative locations. Airline KLM is a important shareholder in SkyNRG and has also confirmed that plans for the factory are being made. The airline currently imports bio-kerosine from Los Angeles and it uses the fuel mainly on its fights to the American east coast. The AD says there are no other bio-kerosines plants in north-west Europe and that the investment will create a large number of jobs. Pollution Passenger air traffic is currently responsible for between 2% and 3% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, but in the Netherlands, the figure is 7%, the AD said. Bio-kerosine is made from leftovers from the timber and agricultural industries, as well as the food processing industry. Wageningen University said earlier this year that bio-kerosene is a potentially important option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector. However, the price is two to three times that of ordinary kerosene and 'the direct and indirect effects... on the aviation sector and the Dutch economy as a whole depend to a large extent on how the additional costs of biokerosene will be funded,' University researchers said.  More >

Amsterdam's housing alderman Laurence Ivens has accused online holiday rentals company Airbnb of not doing enough to combat illegal letting and has threatened not to renew an agreement the city has had with the platform since 2013. Some 20,000 homes were on offer on the rental site this year, a rise of 500 on 2017, despite council efforts to bring holiday rentals under control. The city's agreement with Airbnb on stamping out illegal rentals expires at the end of this year, and Ivens says the American company must do more. Research by local broadcaster AT5 showed that it is still easy for people living in rent-controlled properties to put their homes up for hire by tourists, even though this is illegal. Nor does Airbnb stop people from renting out their homes for three times the permitted 60 days a year by posting their ad multiple times, the documentary claims. The only way officials can check if the law is being broken is to send out inspectors, Ivens said. This is time-consuming and not effective because it needs to be repeated day in, day out, Ivens said. He is now going to increase the number of inspectors to 80. Amsterdam home owners can rent out their property through holiday rental platforms for no more than 60 days a year and to no more than four people at one time. Landlords also have to register each let with the city council. Next January the maximum period for rentals will be cut to 30 days and officials are also looking at bringing in total bans in the busiest parts of the city. Fines People caught breaking the rules can be fined €6,000 for a first offence, mounting to €20,000 for repeated illegal rentals. City officials handed out 148 fines in the first six months of this year and closed 61 apartments which were being rented out illegally to too many people. Laurens told AT5 that he is happy to sit with Airbnb to work out a new deal. 'I am happy to meet them and see if we can come up with a tighter deal, and it is up to them if they want to serve the city,' he said. 'But I am not going to continue like this,' Ivens told the broadcaster. Amsterdam signed its first pioneering agreement on limiting rentals with Airbnb in 2014. DutchNews.nl has approached Airbnb for comment.  More >

Pacific Ocean trials of a young Dutch inventor's system to clear plastic waste from the seas started this weekend, 240 nautical miles offshore from San Fransisco. The system, devised by 24-year-old Boyan Slat while he was a student at Delft University, consists of a 600 metre-long floating curved boom which collects and holds waste until it can be collected. The boom has a three metre skirt attached underneath it to catch waste floating just below the surface. The start of the full sea trial follows hundreds of scale-model tests, a series of prototypes, research expeditions and trials involving a shorter boom in the North Sea. If the two-week trial is successful, the boom will be towed towards what has become know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 1,200 nautical miles offshore to start the clean up. 'Today’s launch is an important milestone, but the real celebration will come once the first plastic returns to shore. For 60 years, mankind has been putting plastic into the oceans; from that day onwards, we’re taking it back out again,' Slat said in a statement on Saturday. Crowdfunding Slat raised the first $2m to to fund his ambitious plan via crowdfunding in 2014. Today the OceanCleanup has a staff of 70 and counts Dutch marine services group Boskalis and Denmark's shipping giant Maersk among its backers. If the current trial is successful, and if the funding is available, The Ocean Cleanup aims to scale up to a fleet of approximately 60 systems focused on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch over the next two years. 'The system is designed to be propelled by wind and waves, allowing it to passively catch and concentrate plastic debris in front of it,'  the organisation says. 'Moving slightly faster than the plastic, the system will act like a giant Pac-Man, skimming the surface of the ocean.' The Ocean Cleanup projects that the full fleet can remove half of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within five years’ time.  More >