AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Netherlands’ highest court on Wednesday ruled that construction of a major carbon capture project in the Rotterdam port area can continue, despite objections by environmental activists.
The planned “Porthos” project, developed by a consortium of Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Air Liquide and Air Products, would be Europe’s largest carbon capture and storage facility, expected to reduce the country’s annual CO2 emissions by about 2%.
The court in November last year said the project, in which CO2 emitted by refineries and chemical plants would be transported to empty gas fields under the North Sea, might have to be halted because it did not meet European environmental guidelines.
The environmental activists that brought the case claimed that nitrogen oxide emissions caused by the construction of Porthos would be detrimental for neighbouring nature reserves and were thereby in violation of European law.
But the court said research commissioned by the government had objectively shown that the effects of construction on the nature reserves would be limited and temporary.
Capturing the CO2 emitted by large industries is seen by many experts as instrumental to the Dutch government’s aim for a 55% reduction of those emissions by 2030, relative to 1990 levels.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Tomasz Janowski)
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