Politicians and policy makers tend to look at renewable fuel sources like solar energy, wind power and biomass production, when formulating the goals for their local future. This ‘energy transition’ will make us independent from fossil fuels and produce energy without emitting toxic gasses into our atmosphere.
An effective and affordable strategy to reduce our emissions is to capture the CO2 emissions from industry and store it in empty gas and oil reserves in the North Sea. This CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) might grow into a new economy for Rotterdam, when the European emission trade system forces industries in Europe to reduce their emissions.
The proximity of harbor, high-energy industry, green house agriculture and high-density urbanization makes the Rotterdam-The Hague region exceptionally suitable for an integral energy approach. Similar to the CO2 captured by industries such as Shell and Abengoa, which is distributed to green houses in the Westland area and used for plant growth stimulation, the waste water from coal power plants could be used in a cascaded heat water network. Cooling water spills into the harbor and North Sea already account for more energy than is produced by all the windmills together in the Netherlands. A circular network from power plants to (chemical) industry to greenhouses to city district heating, connected to decentralized thermal energy storages and geothermal sources, would make effective use of our current energy resources.
Location: Province of South-Holland, Netherlands
Program: Regional strategy
Year: 2014
Commissioner: Province of South-Holland
Partners: H+N+S Landscape architects
Design Directors: Eric Frijters, Olv Klijn
Team: Bas Driessen
