Strawberry grower Royal Berry has grown considerably in recent years. To heat the greenhouses, cogeneration plants (CHP) were chosen. Fellow growers in the NEXTgarden greenhouse area in the municipality of Lingewaard are not happy about this, and there are also questions politically because; shouldn't greenhouse horticulture get rid of gas?
Yes, agrees Royal Berry in an article in De Gelderlander, but there is no completely gas-free alternative in the area. Even the biomass plant in the area in which growers invested together still sometimes uses gas at peak times. Read the whole article here.
No geothermal energy
A lack of geothermal potential in Gelderland means that in the future, the province will have to meet the heat demand from greenhouse horticulture with alternative heat sources, such as biomass. The province is deviating from national climate-neutral scenarios in this towards 2050, according to a study on the future of the province's energy infrastructure in late 2021 in the greenhouse horticulture supplement. The national scenarios lean much more on geothermal energy than is possible in Gelderland.
Commissioned by the province of Gelderland, Berenschot, and Witteveen+Bos, in close cooperation with Liander, Gasunie, TenneT, and the Gelderland Energy Agreement, carried out a study to comprehensively identify the energy infrastructure needed in Gelderland to realize the energy system of the future.