Salt producer Nobian has a scoop with a tailor-made agreement on CO2 emissions

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  Rob Koster

  economics reporter

Salt producer Nobian is the first major company to make agreements with the government about reducing CO2 emissions. The salt factories in Delfzijl and Hengelo are moving away from gas and switching completely to electricity. Minister Hermans of Climate and Green Growth will sign the contract this afternoon in The Hague.

The government is trying to make tailor-made agreements with about twenty large industrial companies about reducing CO2 emissions. Agreements with the major emitters in the Netherlands can bring the 2030 climate goals closer.

This includes Tata Steel IJmuiden, Shell’s refineries and chemical factories in Pernis and Moerdijk and Yara’s fertilizer factory in Sluiskil, Zeeland, the largest in that field in Europe. The companies can receive a subsidy if they go a step further than the rules for sustainability prescribe.

Nobian extracts salt from the soil in Twente and Groningen. The purified salt is raw material for the chemical industry. Salt is converted into hydrogen, caustic soda and chlorine in Delfzijl, Hengelo and Rotterdam with electricity. These semi-finished products are used by other companies, which, for example, turn them into fuel, batteries, plastics and medicines.

The salt factories in Delfzijl and Hengelo currently still run largely on gas. With a government subsidy of 185 million euros, Nobian can get rid of gas ten years earlier than planned. The factories will have large industrial heat pumps, so that the entire production process runs on electricity.

This reduces annual CO2 emissions by 525 kilotons, approximately 1 percent of total industrial emissions in the Netherlands. Because the factories will switch off gas completely by 2030, 300 million cubic meters of gas will be saved. That is equal to the use of all 250,000 households in a city like The Hague.

In addition, electricity use is reduced by 15 percent for chlorine production in Rotterdam. This amounts to 135 gigawatt hours, equal to the consumption of approximately 50,000 households. Nobian is also working with Gasunie on the storage of hydrogen in so-called salt caverns in Zuidwending in Groningen.

The total cost of Nobian’s sustainability plans amounts to 645 million euros. With the 185 million euros from the government, Nobian will not only be CO2 neutral in 2040, but already in 2030. The subsidy makes it possible not to wait until the drive of the factories has been written off.

Until today, the customized agreements with the industry have been limited to good intentions. For example, negotiations with a giant like Tata Steel IJmuiden (8.5 megatons) are extremely complicated. For comparison: Nobian produces 0.5 megatonnes of CO2 emissions.

Discussions with Shell (6.7 megatonnes) are also still stuck in good intentions. BP (2.1 megaton) has postponed negotiations. The Yara fertilizer factory in Zeeland (2.7 megatons) has just sat down again.

Minister Hermans hopes that now that one sheep has crossed the dam, more will follow soon. “Nobian shows what is possible: CO2-neutral production in 2030, well ahead of the goals of the Climate Agreement,” said the minister. Still, the question is whether the other companies will quickly come around.

The energy-intensive industry in the Netherlands complains a lot about its international competitive position. Energy is much more expensive in Europe than in the US and energy costs in the Netherlands are much higher than in Belgium, Germany and France. Because the head offices of industrial companies in the Netherlands are usually located abroad, investments are increasingly being made in other countries.

Nobian has foreign owners, but the head office is in the Netherlands. In addition, the company is dependent on the salt soils in Groningen and Twente. Unpurified salt is too cheap as a raw material to transport over long distances.

And chlorine may not be transported over long distances, for safety reasons. Unlike some other companies, moving is therefore not an option for Nobian, despite the high energy prices.