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Home › Dodgy Deals ›
Dodgy Deal
RWE biomass conversion projectNetherlands

Project – Active

This profile is actively maintained
Profile by:
Environmental Paper Network
Contact:

nature@banktrack.org

Last update: 2025-03-12 00:00:00
RWE's Eemshaven coal power plant in the north in the Netherlands, expected to be conversed to run on biomass. Photo: Wutsje via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)

Project – Active

This profile is actively maintained
Profile by:
Environmental Paper Network
Contact:

nature@banktrack.org

Last update: 2025-03-12 00:00:00
Why this profile?

Why this profile?

RWE is permitted to burn up to 2.6 million tonnes of wood pellets a year in its two coal & biomass power plants in the Netherlands. The company wants to fully convert those plants to 7.5 million tonnes of wood pellets annually, claiming that it will be able to capture and sequester most of the CO2  emitted. However, burning woody biomass emits more CO2 per unit of energy generated than coal, and the demand for wood pellets is accelerating the destruction of wildlife- and carbon-rich forests. Even if RWE were able to capture a significant amount of the CO2  emissions, which is doubtful, their pellet burning would still lead to high upstream emissions, especially from the loss of carbon stored in forests and the reduction in forest carbon sequestration over the coming decades.

What must happen

Banks should avoid financing RWE’s biomass conversion and carbon capture projects. Further, RWE should be excluded from all financial services based on its record on coal alone. The company’s conversion of coal-fired power plants to wood-pellet-burning power plants does not reduce their disastrous climate impact and is linked to unsustainable forest destruction. This provides additional grounds for banks to exclude all financial services to RWE.

About
Sectors Biomass Electric Power Generation
Location
Status
Planning
Design
Agreement
Construction
Operation
Closure
Decommission
Website https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-generation/2023-06-20-beccus-project-to-play-crucial-role-in-climate-neutral-dutch-energy-system/

RWE operates two coal & biomass power stations in the Netherlands; the Amer Power Station and the Eemshaven Power Station. Since the middle of 2019, RWE has been co-firing increasing amounts of wood pellets with coal in both plants. At present, RWE is allowed to burn up to 2.6 million tonnes of wood pellets a year in both plants together. However, the company wants to convert them to 100% biomass (7.5 million tonnes a year), claiming that it would be able to capture the CO2 emitted, even though the carbon capture from biomass combustion has not been proven at scale and RWE has carried out no trials. If both plants were fully converted to biomass, they would burn up to 7.5 million tonnes of wood pellets a year.

The Dutch NGO Comité Schone Lucht (Clean Air Committee) has commented on the 'Note on Scope and Level of Detail' of the environmental impact assessment procedure for the construction of CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) installations at the RWE Amercentrale and Eemshavencentrale. The Environmental Impact Assessments have not yet been published.

The Amer Power Station is currently allowed to burn around 1 million tonnes of wood pellets a year, but RWE wants to scale this up to 2.5 million tonnes, ahead of a full conversion. RWE’s nature permit for increasing biomass burning to 2.5 million tonnes is on hold subject to a court ruling on a challenge by the Dutch NGO Mobilisation for the Environment. The Eemshaven Power Station has been granted a permit to co-fire 1.6 million tonnes of pellets  annually.

Lack of transparency in pellet sourcing

Actual figures as to how many pellets RWE has been burning over the past year have not been published. More concerningly, RWE refuses to disclose any information as to where the pellets it burns in the Netherlands come from. 

Only two pieces of information are publicly available about RWE’s pellet sourcing, from sources other than the company itself: Until January 2024, RWE was buying substantial quantities of pellets from the world’s largest pellet producer Enviva, as well as engaging in  speculative trading with the company to optimise earnings from pellets. It then cancelled the contract and made a claim for €349 against Enviva, following which the pellet producer petitioned for bankruptcy. Graanul Invest, Europe’s largest pellet producer, has been listing RWE as a customer for many years.

Otherwise, the only information available to the public comes from trade statistics. Those show that the Netherlands has been importing wood pellets (in order of quantities) from the southeastern USA, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Baltic States, Belgium, and  Canada (British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). The southeastern USA accounts for the overall majority (56% between July 2023 and June 2024) of all pellets imported to the Netherlands. All or some of the pellets imported from Belgium may be traded from third countries.

Other major pellet consumers, Uniper and Onyx Power (owned by Enviva’s largest shareholder, Riverstone Holdings) together are allowed to co-fire around 900,000 tonnes of pellets in their coal power stations in the Netherlands, hence most of the pellet imports to the Netherlands can be attributed to RWE. Domestic use of wood pellets is insignificant in the Netherlands.

Pellets imported to the Netherlands - most of which go to RWE - come from countries and regions where pellets are routinely made from trees that have been clearcut in biodiverse forests, and (in the case of Vietnam) from tree plantations established at the expense of rainforest destruction.  Especially in the southeastern USA, pellet plants are disproportionately located next to communities living with a high level of deprivation as well as other sources of harmful pollution. For the climate, burning wood for energy is no less harmful than burning coal (per MWh of energy generated).

Impacts

Environmental and climate impacts

 


Impact on human rights and communities

Impacts from air pollution: Production of wood pellets for biomass is associated with air pollution and wood dust pollution. Long-term exposure to wood dust is linked to allergic and non-allergic respiratory and nasal disease and with dermatitis as well as two rare cancers. Studies have focussed on occupational exposure, however people living close to pellet plants can be exposed to significant levels of wood dust over long periods. 

A peer-reviewed study published in 2018 showed that pellet plants in the southeastern USA were 50% more likely to be located in Environmental Justice communities, i.e. communities with a high level of poverty and a large percentage of non-white people. Since 2018, the Southern Environmental Law Center has documented 69 separate enforcement actions against pellet mills in the region for violations of environmental (mostly Clean Air Act) regulations, as well as  a citizen enforcement lawsuit, which included a $683,000 fine and an additional $200,000 in stipulated penalties. They also documented 20 fines for violations of worker health and safety standards.


Impact on climate

The upfront CO2 emissions from burning wood are least as high as those from burning coal (per unit of energy). When trees are logged, the amount of carbon stored in a forest, and the ability of a forest to sequester more carbon dioxide are severely reduced for a period of several decades. This is far longer than the time left to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas levels in order to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.  Hundreds of scientists have pointed out that burning wood from logged trees cannot be compatible with the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. 

Even with future carbon capture, the climate impacts of removing many millions of tonnes of wood from forests, pelletising them and shipping them to the Netherlands  would still be severe, as summarised here by NRDC. The European Academies Sciences Advisory Council) warns: “In view of the leakage of GHG [greenhouse gases]  in the production, treatment and extended transport supply chains of existing large power station usage, the science does not support the conversion of existing large-scale forest biomass power stations to BECCS [Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage)”.


Impact on nature and environment

In the southeastern USA, wood pellets are routinely produced from the clearcutting of mature hardwood forests in a region designated as a global biodiversity hotspot. Large quantities of mature trees go into pellet production.  Logging causes serious harm to animal and plant species that depend on those forest habitats, many of which are endemic species, i.e. not found anywhere else in the wild.

A proportion of pellets made in the region comes from monoculture Loblolly pine plantations. There has been a long-term trend of replacing biodiverse hardwood forests with industrial pine monocultures. The forest conservation NGO Dogwood Alliance has described those plantations as “orderly rows as far as they eye can see like a cornfield, regular spraying of fertilisers and herbicides, and plantations are so quiet because they’re almost devoid of wildlife”. Furthermore, monoculture pine plantations are more prone to effects from drought and cannot regulate the water cycle in the way forest ecosystems can.

Two Malaysian pellet producers have obtained Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) certificates of compliance with EU sustainability criteria for biomass energy: Rainbow Pellets, who operate a pellet plant in Johor which uses wood from rubber plantations, and TreeOne MegaPellet, a subsidiary of the palm oil and timber conglomerate Samling Group, who produce pellets from eucalyptus and acacia plantations in northern Sarawak. SBP certification is indicative of exports to the EU, and no other EU member states has been importing wood pellets from that country. 

During 2024, the Netherlands received 20.000 tonnes of wood pellets from Bintulu in Sarawak, the closest port to the TreeOne MegaPellet plant. According to the SBP certificate for that plant, the wood comes from four tree plantations, one of them “Marudi Licensed Planted Forest LPF0008”. According to a report published by the NGO Mighty Earth in 2020, “The case with the most recent [rainforest] clearance, summarised in our Rapid Response report 24, involves large-scale deforestation within the group’s Marudi & Batu Belah concession in Sarawak. Satellite imagery shows that, in 2019, Samling was responsible for 403 hectares of deforestation within the concession. In the four years prior, from 2014-2018, 4,560 hectares of high density (>75%) tree cover was lost in the concession, according to Global Forest Watch”. The Rapid Response report identifies this concession by the number LPF 0008, i.e. the same concession from which some of the wood for the pellet plant is sourced.Historically, Samling Group has been linked to large-scale rainforest destruction and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in Sarawak, and concerns about their practices around logging, forestry concessions, and respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights have continued to be raised in recent years. 

In Vietnam, according to an investigation by the Earth Journalism Network in 2023, “expansive deforestation in Central Vietnam is being driven by the global demand for wood pellets”. As of 2021, wood for around 70% of the pellets produced in the country was sourced from acacia plantations, according to the NGO Forest Trends. A reporter from the Earth Journalism Network states: “The fast-growing and economical acacia has spread in Central Vietnam in response to the global call for wood pellets to replace coal-fired energy. But it has left biodiversity loss and, in some cases, even death in its wake”. Again, the precise origin of the wood pellet imported from Vietnam to the Netherlands, has not been disclosed.

RWE pellet supplier Graanul Invest operates six pellet plants in Latvia, four in Estonia and one in Lithuania (as well as owning one in Texas). In 2020, an award-winning investigation by a team of investigative journalists documented that a Graanul subsidiary had  been cutting down trees in Natura 2000 areas, stating that their “goals” were “related to the supply of Graanul Invest plants” (i.e. pellet plants). Although a court ordered a temporary suspension of logging in Natura 2000 sites the following year, the Estonian National Audit Office found in 2023 that logging in protected areas undermines nature conservation. As shown in a 2022 report by BirdLife Europe and their Estonian member group, logging volumes in the country have been going up steeply since 2015. 50,000 breeding pairs of forest birds are being lost every year, with logging permitted during bird nesting season. 14% of old-growth forests have been degraded over the past decade, so that they no longer qualify as old growth. Graanul Invest, is Estonia’s single biggest wood consumer.

A 2022 BirdLife Europe report about Latvia highlighted a decline in tree cover, with logging rates having significantly increased since 2015, and the area of forest older than 20 years having been steadily declining since 2008. In Latvia, too, forests are even being clearcut in Natura 2000 areas. Several forest bird species are in steep decline, one of them (Hazel grouse) declined by 93% between 2005 and 2018. In 2021, a report by the Dutch Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) concluded that Estonian wood pellets failed to meet the Dutch biomass sustainability criteria.

Most of the wood pellets exported from Canada to the Netherlands in 2023/24 came from British Columbia. All but one of the pellet plants in the Province from which pellets are exported overseas are owned or co-owned by Drax Group. Drax has been repeatedly shown to be sourcing wood from Primary and Old Growth Forests, and to have sourced wood even from some of the rarest types of Old Growth Forest in British Columbia.

Financiers

For a full overview of banks financing RWE through lending and underwriting services, see here RWE's Dodgy Deal financiers webpage.

Institution type
Finance type
Year
Companies

RWE

Germany
Profile
Website
No companies
Governance
Norms & standards

Applicable norms and standards

Dutch Coal Act
Nature Conservation Act
News
BankTrack
Partners
Blog
External
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Plan ombouw kolencentrales met CO2-afvang ontlokt nieuwe strijd om biomassa: ‘Fnuikend voor de bossen’

2023-11-10 | Algemeen Dagblad
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Wood burning - a threat to climate targets

(In German)
2023-03-03 | tagesschau
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

CO2 capture and storage: 'green' RWE power station in Eemshaven one step closer

2023-02-22 | Dagblad van het Noorden
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Provincie in beroep tegen uitspraak rechter over Amercentrale

(Province appeals against judge's ruling on Amercentrale) - article in Dutch
2021-12-22 | Brabant.nl
Blog
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Investors should reconsider financing Dutch RWE’s biomass and coal plants because of climate impacts, say environmental groups

2021-02-15 | Amsterdam | Environmental Paper Network
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Rekentruc voor houtstook brengt meer stikstof in de lucht

(article in Dutch) De stikstofuitstoot moet dalen, maar twee energiebedrijven mogen juist meer uitstoten met houtovens. Daarvoor gebruiken ze oude, achterhaalde vergunningen.
2020-04-29 | Trouw
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

Coal power could be dramatically cut as Dutch want climate action despite pandemic

2020-04-02 | NL Times
BankTrack news BankTrack blog Partner news Partner blog

The Netherlands Orders Early Closure of Coal Plants

2019-03-31 | Power Magazine
Resources
Documents
Links
2021-12-10 00:00:00

Wet Natuurbescherming, RWE Generation NL

Other document
2021-12-10 00:00:00 | Mobilisation for the environment (MOB)
2019-08-01 00:00:00

Report on pellet mills and logging in Estonia

NGO document
2019-08-01 00:00:00 | Biofuelwatch
2019-07-10 00:00:00

Global Markets for Biomass Energy are Devastating U.S. Forest

NGO document
2019-07-10 00:00:00 | Dogwood Alliance, NRDC, Southern Environmental Law Center

Mobilisation for the Environment

Updates

2022

2022-03-31 00:00:00 | Enviva announces 15-year MOU with European customer, forecasts significant growth for 2022

RWE has signed a new sourcing agreement with Envia, doubling pellet purchases from them. The contract with RWE has a tenor of five years and is for the delivery of 90,000 MT during 2022, increasing to 180,000 MTPY for 2023 through 2026.

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