Government invests €4.7 million in climate initiatives

The funding comes from the Flemish Climate Fund, a unique instrument that takes in revenue from the sale of emission rights and the collection of fines from airline companies.

The government allocated €1.9 million to waste authority Mirom in Roeselare, West Flanders, to create a district heating network between an incineration plant and a greenhouse cultivation cluster. The network will transport surplus heat from Mirom’s incinerator to the greenhouse cluster Roeselare-West.

A second initiative is the investment of €2.25 million in small-scale anaerobic digestion at agricultural companies. Through this process, organic substances from manure are transformed into biogas, which is used as fuel for a generator that produces electricity.

An investment of €450,000, meanwhile, is being made to ensure specialised advice regarding energy consumption is available to tourist agencies and hotels. An advisor will carry out energy scans and propose measures to reduce consumption.

Finally, the government has allocated €117,000 to the construction of shore power infrastructure for inland waterway shipping at Evergem in East Flanders and Wijnegem in Antwerp province. The infrastructure will ensure that ships don’t have to use their own generators for the provision of electricity on board, which reduces both carbon dioxide emissions and noise nuisance.

“These projects are part of continued efforts to reach Flanders’ climate goals and to help realise Europe's global climate commitments of Europe,” said Schauvliege.

The minister returned this week from the climate change conference in Lima, which she described as “relatively positive”. The 195 countries agreed to adopt measures to avert global warming. Most analysts agree that the policies countries plan to pursue to reduce carbon emissions will be minimal, but, said Schauvliege, “we knew that this was only a step on the way to the Paris summit” in a year's time.

Photo by Wiktor Dabkowski/ZUMA Press/Corbis