EarthFirst! blockade at coal-fired power plant in Rotterdam, NL

8.12.2007
On Sat­ur­day morn­ing a col­lec­tive of twen­ty Dutch Earth­First! activists blocked the coal con­vey­or- belt to a plant owned by the Ger­man ener­gy giant E.on on the Maasvlak­te near Rot­ter­dam. This day, Decem­ber 8, has been announced as an inter­na­tion­al action­day in the protest against the coal indus­try. The grow­ing num­ber of coal-fired pow­er plants world­wide and in the Nether­lands at the moment is the biggest threath to the cli­mate. Sec­ond­ly, this action is part of the protest against the plans for a new E.on coal-fired plant, right next to the exist­ing one on the Maasvlak­te.

Sev­er­al activists have locked them­selves to the con­vey­or-belt which trans­ports the coals to the pow­er­plant. ‘Unfor­tu­nate­ly that won’t mean they’ll shut down the entire pow­er plant. There’s enough sup­ply at the fur­nace to keep it run­ning for a while. If we real­ly man­age to shut down the plant there’ll be enough oth­er plants to cov­er the short­age’, accord­ing to Flip, one of the par­tic­i­pat­ing activists. The activists plan to stay as long as pos­si­ble. They demand the can­cel­la­tion of the con­struc­tion plans for the new E.on coalpow­er­plant.

In the Nether­lands five new coal-fired pow­er plants are planned to be built. E.on is mak­ing a con­cert­ed effort to be the first com­pa­ny to start build­ing next spring. E.on is also plan­ning to build a coal-fired plant in Antwer­pen, Bel­gium. These new pow­er plants do not cor­re­spond at all with the cli­mate-ambi­tions of the Nether­lands and specif­i­cal­ly Rot­ter­dam to reduce CO2 emis­sions. Coals are the most pol­lut­ing ener­gy source pos­si­ble, because apart from CO2, the emis­sions also include heavy met­als, radioac­tive par­ti­cles and oth­er green­house gas­es. Because of this, build­ing a new pow­er plant makes sure any attempt to solve the cli­mate cri­sis will nev­er suc­ceed. Besides, the build­ing of new coal-fired plants inter­feres with the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able ener­gy. The pol­lut­ing sources fill the ener­gy grid and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment invest­ments will only be used for car­bon cap­ture and stor­age.

The com­pa­ny E.on is run­ning a PR cam­paign, using pret­ty words like ‘Clean Coals’ and ‘the Cap­ture Ready prepa­ra­tion’ of the new plant to defend them­selves. Both these terms have been proved to be based on noth­ing. The min­ing of coals is extreme­ly pol­lut­ing; so there is no such thing as ‘Clean Coals’. Large part­sof the Earth are being destroyed; there is severe pol­lu­tion of water and soil in the min­ing areas of the Unit­ed States, Colum­bia, Indone­sia and South Africa. In the coalmines, min­ers are being exploit­ed and annu­al­ly thou­sands of peo­ple die as a result of dis­as­ters.

The term ‘Cap­ture Ready prepa­ra­tion’ used by E.on is a fraud. A car­bon-cap­tur­ing pow­er plant will use between 24 and 40 per­cent of its pro­duced ener­gy on the cap­ture process. It must there­fore burn more coal to pro­vide the same amount of out­put ener­gy as a non car­bon-cap­tur­ing pow­er plant.

The type of plant E.on is about to build has proven to be extreme­ly unsuit­able for car­bon stor­age. The fumes released by this spe­cif­ic type of plant con­tain many pol­lu­tants and thus are com­pli­cat­ed and expen­sive to treat. E.on’s promise to start cap­tur­ing car­bon ‘as soon as it is tech­ni­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly viable’ is there­fore com­plete­ly point­less and has only result­ed in an emp­ty spot on the blue­prints, reserved for a future cap­tur­ing instal­la­tion.

So what if you can­not burn coals as an ener­gy source? Flip: ‘Besides the pos­si­bil­i­ty of decen­tralised and actu­al sus­tain­able ener­gy, it is most of all nec­es­sary to use less pow­er. Sus­tain­able pow­er has its lim­its as well. If we real­ly want to antic­i­pate the deple­tion of nat­ur­al resources and the ensu­ing cli­mat­ic dis­as­ter, we’ll some­how have to find a dif­fer­ent way of liv­ing that won’t include dog­mat­ic eco­nom­ic growth. Play more with less’.

The Dutch Earth­First! action is part of the ‘Shrink or Sink’ cam­paign, fight­ing both the cli­mate and ener­gy cri­sis and rapid­ly decreas­ing biover­si­ty. Direct action against the con­struc­tion of new coal-fired plants is one of the main top­ics of the cam­paign.