Sustainability in the Dutch Power Sector - Greenpeace Nederland

Sustainability in the Dutch Power Sector
Fact Sheet Series – Update 2009
business as usual, using coal, nuclear power, and pseudo-solutions such as agrofuels and
carbon capture and storage (CCS).” 356
Acquisition
In February 2009, Nuon announced that it received a take-over bid of € 8.5 billion from
Sweden’s Vattenfall. 357 Nuon’s shareholders including the municipality of Amsterdam, and
the provinces Gelderland, Noord-Holland and Friesland, have since agreed to the takeover.
The bid has also been approved by the European Competition Authorities. 358 Vattenfall
acquired 49% of the Nuon shares as of the first of July 2009, for an amount of € 4,833
million, giving the company operational control over Nuon. Vattenfall will acquire the
remaining 51% of shares in the coming six years under fixed terms. It has also been
announced that Vattenfall will sell off Nuon’s retail activities in Germany. 359 In order to
provide readers an approximate picture of what the new combined Vattenfall / Nuon
company will look like with regard to the sustainability criteria examined in this report, the two
companies’ figures have been combined in a number of instances below. It should be noted,
however, that these combined-company (i.e. Vattenfall / Nuon) approximations are SOMO’s
estimations and have not been verified by either Vattenfall or Nuon.
8.2 Installed capacity and electricity generation in Europe
Nuon
While Nuon has several international operations, practically all of its electricity generation
capacity is located in the Netherlands. In total, Nuon owns an installed capacity of 4,146
MW, of which 44MW is based outside of the Netherlands. Figure 18 gives the fuel mix of
Nuon’s installed capacity. One-third of the wind capacity comes from the large offshore wind
farm near Egmond aan Zee. The company also owns three small-scale hydroelectric plants,
one in Maurik and one in Alphen with a capacity of 10 MW and 14 MW, respectively, and a
smaller plant at Roermond. 360 The biomass capacity is mainly accounted for by the biomass
plant Lelystad, while in the Willem-Alexander plant in Buggenum biomass is co-fired in the
coal gasifier. 361 In 2008, 24.8 MW of new wind capacity was realized. 362
Figure 19 and Table 28 reveal the fuel mix of the electricity generated by Nuon. Under the
category “Natural gas”, Nuon makes the distinction between three different types of gas from
which it produces electricity: 19.5% comes from blast furnace gases generated at the Corus
356
Climate Greenwash website, “Climate Greenwash Awards 2009, no date, http://www.climategreenwash.org/ (20-
07-09).
357
Nuon website, press release, “Nuon en Vattenfall bundelen krachten en vormen toonaangevend Europees
energiebedrijf”, 23-02-09, http://www.nuon.com/nl/pers/persberichten/20090223/index.jsp (02-07-09).
358
Nuon website, press release, “Groen licht van Europese mededingingsautoriteit voor Nuon en Vattenfall”, 22-06-
09, http://www.nuon.com/nl/pers/persberichten/20090622/index.jsp (02-07-09).
359
Nuon website, press release, “Nuon and Vattenfall complete transaction”, 01-07-09.
http://www.nuon.com/press/press-releases/20090701/index.jsp (28-07-09).
360
Nuon response to a draft version of this report, email received 22-07-09.
361
Nuon website, Centrales “Willem-Alexander centrale te Buggenum, no date,
http://www.nuon.com/nl/het-bedrijf/kernactiviteiten/opwekken-energie/centrales/buggenum.jsp (02-07-09).
362
Nuon Annual Report, 2008, http://www.nuon.com/nl/investor-relations/publicaties-en-presentaties/2008.jsp (28-
07-09), p.51.
65