Biomass plant AEB continues to burn Spanish wood, municipality powerless

Earlier this year, the news that the AEB biomass plant in Westpoort burns prunings from Spain sparked outrage in the city council. In fact, hard agreements had been made with the company that the wood would come from their own neighborhood. It now appears that the power station will continue to burn Spanish wood if necessary and the municipality is powerless.

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Aldermen Van Doorninck (Sustainability) and Kukenheim (Participation) write this in a letter to the city council. According to them, the management of AEB has decided to continue burning foreign wood for ‘commercial interest’. The biomass power station would have been given the authority via the Supervisory Board to burn foreign biomass if insufficient prunings can be found in the region and as a result the energy supply agreements cannot be met. From March 18 they started burning 2200 tons of wood from Spain.

Dates

When it was decided in 2018 about the arrival of the biomass plant, AEB promised to only burn prunings from within a radius of 150 kilometers around Amsterdam. It was one of the tough demands to combat deforestation. In addition, comments have also been made about the sustainability of biomass as a fuel, because burning the wood emits a lot of C02.

And so the shock was great when it was announced in February that the power station still imported wood from abroad† The council was displeased that they were not involved in the decision, since Amsterdam is one hundred percent shareholder. A reconsideration was requested.

No influence

The conclusion of the reconsideration is clear: AEB has imported wood out of commercial interest and the Supervisory Board has allowed it to continue to do so. “The municipality has obtained legal advice about the possibilities as a shareholder to influence the assessment that the management of AEB makes in this regard. This legal advice shows that there is no such room,” reads the letter to the city council.

The decision to import the prunings is part of the operational management and therefore the responsibility of the management, reads the letter from the aldermen. As a result, the shareholder, the municipality, cannot exert any influence. There will be additional research into the supply of biomass.

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