Peter-Vincent Schuld

Will the gas tap be closed further in the north of the Netherlands?
Will new gas-fired power plants open in Belgium?

The Netherlands and Belgium partly share the same language, we were once, a long time ago, 1 country, but nowadays our interests are and remain sometimes divergent.

The Netherlands is facing serious problems with natural gas extraction in Groningen. The pumping of the gas has led to tremors in many places in Groningen and serious damage to houses and buildings as a result of gas extraction. As a result, the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (Dutch Petroleum Company) had to partially turn off the gas tap. If it were up to the residents in Groningen, the gas tap would be closed even further. It is not only those who are injured by natural gas extraction who are arguing for the natural gas tap to be turned off further.

Climate critics have long advocated reducing the share of fossil fuels in the energy market. However, the desire often remains the father of all thoughts, because despite the desire and the countless efforts to save energy, the demand for energy will only increase due to the increased global economic development and the growth of the world population. Moreover, we must remain honest.

Commercial energy suppliers naturally want to sell as many of their products as possible and have as large a market share as possible.
If the (European) government had not wanted to see a revenue model for supplying energy, they should not have privatized the energy suppliers. Even today, that theme plays out. After all, the shareholders of one of the largest energy companies in the Netherlands, Eneco, are 53 Dutch municipalities.

On the other hand, these municipalities, which often proclaim energy saving and greening in their policy, argue that they do not see a public mission as a commercial activity of supplying energy. In addition, as we have already seen with the sale of Nuon to the Swedish Vattenfall and the sale of Essent to the German RWE, we must not forget that the 53 shareholder municipalities would like to see the billions that the shares in Eneco are worth end up in the municipal coffers.

No matter how we look at it, we can set ourselves all kinds of climate targets, but the economic and demographic realities and individualistic thinking and acting create a field of tension between the increasing demand for energy on the one hand and the reduction of CO2 on the one hand and safety issues such as earthquakes and subsidence on
and around the Groningen natural gas fields on the
other.

Compared to petroleum and coal, natural gas is the least polluting fossil fuel.

Elia, the Belgian grid operator, is warning the Belgian government to speed up the construction of new power plants to compensate for the impending power shortage if Belgium does indeed stop generating nuclear energy by 2025. The Belgian Greens want this exit anyway, the Flemish party N-VA wants to keep the nuclear power plants open for a while longer.

Grid operator Elia outlines three scenarios that could be pursued.

The first scenario is a total and fast, but therefore also the most expensive switch (2.1 billion euros per year) to fully renewable energy. This includes wind energy, biomass and solar energy. Still, this is a risky choice. After all, the revenues from green/renewable energy are still fluctuating at the moment.

The second possible scenario, according to Elia, is to keep the youngest nuclear reactors at the Doel and Tihange nuclear power plants open longer. In that scenario, a large part of the impending electricity shortage would be absorbed, but a number of new gas-fired power plants would still have to be built.

The third and final scenario, as seen by grid operator Elia, is to compensate for the loss of electricity capacity in the event of a total Belgian exit from nuclear energy, mainly by building more gas-fired power plants and controlling electricity consumption. This option would cost Belgian society around 0.9 billion euros per year.

Belgium is in a quandary. After all, nuclear energy is relatively cheap and does not burden the climate, but it does have risks with regard to the safety of reactors and the problem of nuclear waste.

Controlling electricity consumption can only be controlled by the price tag attached to the energy bill, and the question is whether that does not put too much strain on businesses and citizens. A citizen and a company can also spend only 1 x per euro.
The efficiency and efficiency of nuclear energy and natural gas remain high.

In two of the scenarios outlined by Elia, there is an explicit need for and the need to build gas-fired power plants.
This gas also has to come from somewhere and has to be transported to Belgium. The natural gas used by consumers in Belgium is mainly of Dutch origin. However, the Netherlands has indicated that it will phase out the supply of natural gas to Belgium from 2024 in order to completely discontinue it in 2030. This is a direct consequence of the increasing turning off of the natural gas tap during gas extraction in the Dutch city of Groningen.

Here we come across another cost item for the Belgians that you would not immediately expect. The natural gas meters in use in Belgium are only suitable for measuring the consumption of Dutch low-calorific natural gas. One million natural gas meters in Flanders, 500,000 natural gas meters in the Brussels region and another 100,000 meters in Wallonia must be adapted or replaced with a provisional cost estimate of 700 million euros. The question then arises whether the recently announced tax shift, whereby the increase in taxes on the consumption of natural gas and heating oil is not in some way related to the costs of replacing and adapting the meters. In other words, the shift from the currently highly taxed electricity to the higher taxation of natural gas and heating oil in Belgium has nothing to do with the need for the costs associated with replacing the natural gas meters and may have nothing to do with merely steering towards the greening of energy use in Belgium. After all, it would not be the first time that the Belgians have been deceived by their politicians.

However, this does not detract from the fact that Dutch gas extraction will be reduced. Former Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp decided during the previous cabinet term that the extraction of natural gas had to be reduced from 24 billion cubic meters per year to 21.6 billion cubic meters in the period 2017-2018 because of the earthquakes in Groningen. In doing so, Minister Kamp partially met the demands of residents around the Groningen natural gas fields who had to deal with earthquakes and subsidence as a result of gas extraction. If it had been the suffering of those affected by Groningen, the natural gas tap would have been turned off even further.

The natural gas extraction company NAM (Dutch Petroleum Company) appealed against the Minister’s decision to the Council of State. The Province of Groningen, various municipalities and the Groningen Soil Movement also appealed. The NAM believes it is unfair that the company is restricted from the extraction of natural gas. The NAM did not consider it sufficiently scientifically proven that this restriction on the extraction of natural gas (with the exception of very cold winters when an additional 5.4 billion cubic meters may be extracted) would indeed lead to an improvement in safety for residents and their homes.

The highest Dutch administrative court announced on Wednesday that it has ruled that Minister Kamp has failed in his substantiation of his decision. Kamp is said to have insufficiently justified what the efforts would have been to limit the “hunger” for natural gas. Kamp is also said to have failed in his justification of what the risks would be for the population in the event of continued intensive extraction. In addition, the minister has not made it sufficiently clear why continuity of supply prevails while there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the dangers of intensive gas extraction in Groningen. In his decisions, the minister assumed that it was not possible to calculate the risks for the residents. The Conseil d’État argues that the correctness of this assertion has not been sufficiently demonstrated.

The new Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Wiebes, has been given a year by the administrative court to come up with a more substantiated extraction plan.

Former professor of Reservoir Technology Hagoort (TU Delft) states unequivocally that injecting nitrogen into the ground is the solution to earthquakes and subsidence. It is said to be a proven technology that has been successfully tested in other extraction projects elsewhere. Both in the Netherlands (gas extraction site in De Wijk in Drenthe) and in an offshore extraction project in Mexico.

Objectively, it can be concluded that the need for natural gas consumption will not decrease significantly within the next twelve years. Certainly not now that it seems that the increase in electricity generation through gas-fired power plants seems to be a very plausible option in Belgium alone.

Finding the balance between meeting the increasing energy demand on the one hand and the need to reduce CO2 emissions on the other seems to be an incredibly difficult and complicated task. After all, not only climate plays a role in this, but also elements such as safety (risks of nuclear energy and risks of gas extraction) and the economic reality of supply and demand. The government can try to regulate this, but it always comes up against conflicting interests in which the related costs must ultimately be borne by the taxpayer.
Only the future will tell to what extent citizens can continue to identify with this and whether they succeed in finding social or electoral support.