Company

 

E.ON Kraftwerke, a company with proven expertise in building fossil power plants with state of the art technology.

 

Electricity market

 

The Belgian electricity market is characterized by the following elements: lack of capacity – base and peak – as confirmed by the national regulator nearly 50 percent of the generation capacity is nuclear and Belgium intends to step out of nuclear energy as from 2015 Belgium still has a number of older coal fired plants, with performances of 36 percent or even lower In its most recent energy report the national regulator Creg stated that new capacity is urgently needed.

 

Region

 

The Antwerp Port region is a large industrial area, especially with a lot of petrochemical industry, which is also in demand of stable energy supply (electricity, as well as steam). The location is situated on the river Schelde, close to the North Sea. This has large benefits for the cooling water situation. Because of this, no cooling tower is needed and the efficiency of the units is significantly higher than inland power plants. Also, thanks to the deep water, large sea-going vessels, have access to the coal terminal, next to the E.ON site. These characteristics make Antwerpen one of the preferred locations for coal fired power plants in the world.

 

Power plant

 

This is why E.ON Benelux planned the construction of a new coal fired power plant at this site. It is known as the Antwerp Power Plant (APP). The new plant has a gross capacity of 1.100 MW. The budget is appr. € 1.2 billion. According to the current timing, construction should start early 2010. The unit could then be operational in 2014 or 2015 the latest. APP will be able to co-fire biomass and is prepared for heat delivery to industries and domestic zones in the area. Furthermore APP is ‘capture ready’. This means that preparations have been made to retrofit a unit for the capture of CO₂. E.ON continuously invests in further research & development in new environmental technology.