Ventilus report ready Friday
The Ventilus line is needed to bring the electricity from offshore wind farms ashore. The Flemish government has been investigating for years whether this high-voltage line should be placed underground or above ground. The report by intendant Guy Vloebergh previously showed that it is virtually impossible and very expensive to do this underground and on direct current.
Additional research
But at the request of various action groups and the West Flemish mayors, the government has agreed to an additional investigation into that route, although it rather speaks of a ‘double check’. At the suggestion of the mayors, the German professor Dirk Westerman has been appointed. He is a professor at the Technical University of Ilmenau and is known as a specialist in underground DC power lines.
Westerman has said in the meantime that he can study the results of the earlier report, but that he cannot conduct further investigation due to a conflict of interest. After all, his university receives a lot of orders from the German 50Hertz, and is said to be half dependent on their funding. 50Hertz is a subsidiary of the Belgian high-voltage grid operator Elia.
The Demir cabinet confirms that the professor will submit his paper tomorrow. According to the government, there is no indication that this will be incomplete. “The intendant’s report and the mayors’ proposals are concerned with the request to discuss them in his report,” he said. According to the cabinet, there is therefore no reason to assume that no decision can be made in the file this month.
“Right to participate”
Bart Dochy, the CD&V mayor of Ledegem who acts as mouthpiece for the mayors, expects an invitation from the government. “It was agreed that we would be fed back before the report is presented,” he says. “We still have the right to participate in the layout of the document.”
“If it can be stated clearly in the report that it is an objective scientific work without any influence, we will support it,” continues the CD&V member. “If that’s not the case, we haven’t made any progress. And that’s what we want.”