At our Oosterland site, we have reduced our fossil fuel usage by 70% since the end of 2018 by heating our greenhouses with a wood-fuelled heating system. This system uses branches, leaves and unprocessed waste wood from local landscape gardeners and forestry businesses, so no large forests in green areas are affected. The heating system is operated by a partnership (DES B.V.) consisting of three growers: Van Duijn De Jong Aubergines, VOF Prominent Grevelingen and DT van Noord Tomaten.

In Terneuzen, the chemical and horticultural industries are a stone’s throw away from each other. Heat pipes have been laid in two polders, allowing the horticulture sector to access high-quality residual heat and pure residual CO₂ from fertiliser manufacturer Yara. CO₂ is an important resource for plants, which absorb it from the air. In the Zeelandic Flanders horticultural area, the amount of heat reused is the equivalent of the annual consumption of 35,000 households. The scale of this project is unique in the Netherlands.

For the Nieuw-Prinsenland greenhouse horticulture area, a reservoir with a capacity of 3,000 cubic metres (3 million litres) per hectare is located in Dinteloord, which can collect a total of 17.5 million litres of rainwater. This is plenty in a season with normal temperatures but not enough in a hot year. In Nieuw-Prinsenland, this shortfall is made up by using water from the Suiker Unie sugar beet factory. Sugar beet consists of approximately 70% water, which is released when the beets are processed into sugar. This water used to be discharged, but now it is treated and stored in the ground ready for piping to the cultivation site.

We run two CHPs and two heat pumps along with aquifers. The CHP emits low-grade hot air, of about 30 degrees, through the chimney. This heat is normally lost, but not with us. At our Steenbergen location, we further cool these flue gases and store this low-grade heat in the ground. This is through wells about 80 meters deep and we do this through an aquifer. In winter, we bring this warmth back up. Through the heat pumps, we bring the temperature back up to as high as 45 degrees. We can make good use of this temperature in our heating system. The heat pumps are powered by electricity and can produce 1 MWh of heat.

In addition to all the innovative solutions to the natural gas problem we have implemented at our facilities, our cultivators also try to grow as much as possible according to the principle of ”The New Cultivation,” or HNT for short. With HNT, energy is used as consciously as possible while achieving optimal production. HNT uses physics knowledge to optimally control cultivation in such areas as temperature, moisture, CO₂ dosage, light and screens. For example, many of our greenhouses have a second energy screen, this provides significant energy savings and better cultivation results.