A strange vehicle will be driving on the bottom of the harbor in the western port area of the Port of Rotterdam, on a trial basis. It is the Deep Dig-it, an unmanned trencher of 17 meters long and 138,000 kilos clean on the hook.
The port of Rotterdam reported that the coming decades will present a development in the number of wind farms in the North Sea, providing opportunities to the port and the companies on this segment.
The project organisation Porthos has signed an agreement with four companies to work in parallel over the coming nine months on preparations for the capture, transport and storage of CO₂, in line with the Netherlands’ goals to significantly reduce GHG emissions.
Three amongst the largest European ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent, are planned to be used to capture and bury 10m tonnes of CO2 emissions under the North Sea. The aim of the project is to build the CO2 network in the port of Rotterdam by 2026, with work then to be completed in the following four years on a cross-border pipeline to Antwerp and the North Sea port by Ghent.
At the National Wind Energy Event at De Kuip in Rotterdam on 17 April, members of the Rotterdam Offshore Wind Coalition agreed to resume their collaboration. The companies in the coalition partner in marketing and branding, education and training, policy and lobbying, and acquisition and innovation. The coalition began in 2016 and for the past three years it has been supporting offshore wind-related projects.
The Central Government Real Estate Agency (RVB), Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) and the Port of Rotterdam Authority plan to construct a new floating solar farm in Rotterdam’s western port area. Therefore, they seek for the ideal participant to operate the new facility, which is reported to be the largest of its kind to be ever constructed in the Netherlands. The partners announced that they will organise a market consultation on May 8.
A recent published EY report (Ernst & Young – Dutch Oilfield Services Analysis, 2018) shows how important the offshore industry is to the Port of Rotterdam. As the report notes, Rotterdam is the largest and most important cluster in the Netherlands. The port and city accommodates a number of the largest offshore companies active in the Netherlands.
A consortium of Dutch companies, universities and knowledge institutions have teamed up on the ‘Gigawatt Electrolysis Factory’ project, recently kicked-off at the Institute for Sustainable Process Technology, aiming to investigate what it takes to build a gigawatt-sized electrolysis plant in the Netherlands around 2025-2030.
GBM Works and partners are conducting a pilot concerning a new method to install the monopiles on which wind turbines are installed in a sustainable and cost-efficient manner on the Maasvlakte, in Port of Rotterdam. The vibro-drill method is the foundation piles for wind turbines -monopiles- that are brought into the seabed by means of vibrating elements at the bottom of the pile.
Eneco and Vattenfall will place an enhanced version of the Slufterdam wind farm into service. The 17 wind turbines in the farm that have been supplying energy since 2002, have been replaced by 14 more efficient wind turbines. Consequently, the power has almost doubled from 25.5 MW to 50.4 MW. The 14 wind turbines generate 180 GWh of electricity every year, enough to cover the annual consumption of around 60,000 households.
