Monday, November 23, 2015

64 Dutch professors request immediate closure of all coal powered electricity plants

64 Dutch professors in the topics of sustainability and environment write a public letter to the government and parliament [trouw.nl, in Dutch] requesting immediate closure of all coal powered electricity plants. Noting that according to a recent report of the European Environment Agency, presumably this one [eea.europa.eu], The Netherlands is among the worst performing on the targets that were set under Kyoto and EU 2020 objectives.

They argue that The Netherlands has enough spare capacity in gas powered electricity plants to shut down all coal powered plants immediately. The additional gas should be imported from Norway.

The purpose would be to 1) meet the emission targets a Dutch court has already ruled the government should abide to, 2) send a strong signal in preparation to the Paris climate talks, 3) do away with impression that a country that is among those most at risk of rising sea-levels is doing very little to prevent it.

The closing of coal powered electricity plants is a world wide pattern, with commitments from the US, UK and Germany, while China has been reducing the number of coal powered plants it is planning to build. Global investors have been pulling money out of the industry, seen as a liability.

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