Ineos faces legal challenge over plans for plastics plant in Antwerp
British petrochemicals company Ineos is facing a legal challenge over plans to build a giant plastics plant in Antwerp.
Environmental law firm ClientEarth on Friday launched an appeal against Antwerp’s decision to grant Ineos a permit to build a chemicals installation to make ethylene from fracked US shale gas, the Guardian has learned.
Ineos’ billionaire owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, announced a €3bn investment in Antwerp in January 2019 at a signing ceremony with top Flemish politicians. “We’ll become stronger in Europe as a petrochemicals player,” said the businessman, an ardent Brexit supporter, who lives in tax-free Monaco.
Acting for 13 green NGOs, including Greenpeace and WWF, ClientEarth said the project has not met the EU legal requirement of a full assessment of the impact on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.
“We already have more plastics than we need,” said ClientEarth lawyer Tatiana Luján. “Beyond the local effects on nature and health [Ineos] project one would cause, we cannot ignore that the basis of this project is fossil fuels, and they’ll be used to create the building blocks of plastics.”
The NGOs say the project will fuel the production of single-use plastics, thus failing to match the requirements of EU waste reduction strategies and climate commitments. Antwerp authorities, which granted the permit last December, are also accused of having failed to consider the plant’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the damage nitrogen pollution would wreak on local wildlife.
Separately, the Dutch province of Zeeland announced earlier this month it would appeal Antwerp’s decision, arguing that “no appropriate assessment has been made” of the impact of increased nitrogen on its
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