According to Tata Steel, greening the steel plant will bring several health benefits to the environment. If the company partially switches from coal to natural gas or hydrogen, fewer harmful substances will be released into the air.
But according to the expert team, it is still unclear what emissions Tata Steel actually emits, and to what extent the emissions figures are based on measurements or estimates. The company “so far appears reluctant to provide this data, including to the expert group,” the report says.
In its greening plans, Tata primarily communicates expected emissions reductions in percentages, without clarifying the absolute magnitude of emissions. “More transparency is necessary here,” the expert group says.
Tata’s ijzeren greep
Eind vorig jaar maakte NU.nl-verslaggever Jeroen Kraan de podcastserie Tata’s ijzeren greep. Hij onthulde onder meer afspraken waardoor het bedrijf jarenlang te veel mocht blijven uitstoten. Alle afleveringen zijn te beluisteren via NU.nl, Spotify en Apple Podcasts.
Professors also believe that greening Tata Steel will take a long time. It will take six years to build the new factories, while the old factories are still smoking. Experts fear that during that period, health damage to the region will actually increase.
Tata Steel wants to close its most famous plant, coke gas plant 2, in 2029. The expert team believes this should happen sooner. But Levy maintains that as far as the group of experts is concerned, the steel plant can continue to exist. “It’s very important for the region, and maybe even for the country. But it needs to be greener and have less impact on the health of local people.”
According to experts, not only Tata, but the government too should increase its ambitions. Tata wants Egmond’s air quality to meet standards set by the World Health Organization in 2005 by 2030. But these have now been replaced by stricter WHO guidelines from 2021.
The expert team believes the Netherlands must ensure that air quality across the country meets these more stringent standards from 2035. WHO guidelines must also be used in preparing permits for Tata Steel. The province of North Holland, responsible for permits, Complain She is concerned about the difficulty of taking into account health impacts when granting permits.
Following stricter WHO standards is also a bridge too far for The Hague and Brussels at the moment. It’s crazy books In 2022 for the House of Representatives it is currently impossible to improve air quality much. Member states of the European Union He agreed last week About new air quality standards that allow concentrations of ultrafine particles and nitrogen dioxide to be twice what the World Health Organization recommends.
Heijnen says on Wednesday that she will study the recommendations of the expert group. The minister had earlier said that climate agreements with Tata must take into account health harms. It should become clear within the year exactly how this will happen.
Tata Steel calls the expert panel’s report “valuable” and says it also wants to make steel production cleaner. “We feel this urgency and see this as an important signal for our conversations in the custom process,” says a company spokesperson.
