Pressure builds on Europe's biggest port to be greener
Standing on a grassy verge in the Hook of Holland, I'm overlooking the Port of Rotterdam. At the delta of the Rhine and Meuse in
Standing on a grassy verge in the Hook of Holland, I'm overlooking the Port of Rotterdam. At the delta of the Rhine and Meuse in the Netherlands, on land largely reclaimed from the North Sea, it's the biggest port for freight, external in Europe. By some measures, Rotterdam alone handles almost as much cargo as all UK ports combined. The horizon is dominated by cranes, bulk carriers and container stacks – the visible parts of a vast energy and chemicals hub.
Five refineries, including Shell's largest in Europe, process hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil a day, while a tight cluster of chemical plants feeds factories across the continent. According to research by CE Delft, the fossil fuels flowing through the port are ultimately linked to around 600 megatonnes of CO2 a year – many times more than the CO2 output of the Netherlands' biggest airport, Schiphol. That scale has made Rotterdam a test case for a difficult question: can a port built on fossil fuels ever truly become green?
Pressure is building on the port to do something. A lawsuit brought by environmental group Advocates for the Future argues that the Port of Rotterdam Authority is not doing enough to phase out fossil-based energy, and wants a concrete plan to wind down the coal, oil and gas flows whose emissions dwarf those of most countries. Rotterdam's own industrial cluster currently emits about 29 million tonnes of CO2 a year – roughly half of the Netherlands' domestic emissions, says Mark van Dijk, head of external relations at the Port of Rotterdam Authority.
That's the equivalent of tens of thousands of return flights from Amsterdam to Los Angeles. "It's not good," admits van Dijk.
The BriefWire