After previous sessions on the Climate agreement by the Dutch government and on the gas phase-out in the Dutch residential sector, Industry was the focus for the latest (and quickest to sold-out) event from the Energy Club of the Dutch INSEAD Alumni Association.
Kindly hosted by the Port of Rotterdam, overlooking both the city of Rotterdam and the port itself, Yvonne van der Laan (VP Industry and Bulk Cargo at the Port of Rotterdam) showed us the journey the Port has taken so far to becoming the most sustainable port in the world, and the steps and challenges still ahead. This includes creating a new energy system (e.g making green hydrogen using electrolyzers) and utilizing new processes to create raw materials (e.g. waste-to-chemicals), all needed to fulfill the future energy need of the port and surrounding area.
The second speaker of the evening, Marcel Galjee, Director Energy at Nouryon and as such also responsible for Nouryons €500M energy bill, gave us insight into Nouryons vision of creating a circular, biobased industry of the future, and the need for partnerships in successfully achieving this.
Industry was not just one of the tables in process leading up to the Dutch climate agreement, but is actually feeding into all others (built environment, mobility, energy, and agro) as well.
He made all of us aware of the massive task lying ahead of us. As an example, while Nouryon is planning to build a 20MW electrolyzer in Delfzijl, and a 100MW one in the port of Amsterdam, it would take 50 of the latter (e.g. a 5GW baseload) to fully decarbonize the Tata Steel location in IJmuiden, putting the current offshore wind ambitions of the Dutch government in perspective…
For large scale roll out of electrolyzers, not only the cost of green electricity needs to drop further, the CAPEX of electrolyzers is required to drop by ~50% over the next 10 years (which is of the order of magnitude of cost reductions seen in the PV and battery storage technologies).
While the next event from the Energy Club has not been scheduled yet, the Energy transition will be a topic of the Strategy Forum which will be held November 26. But before that, don’t forget Global INSEAD day on September 12. Looking forward to seeing you at these events or the next Energy Club event.