Anders Eldrup is CEO of DONG Energy, one of Northern Europe’s leading energy companies. He joined DONG in 2001 as CEO, where he headed the growth strategy that led, among other things, to the merger of six Danish energy companies into DONG Energy. Prior to joining DONG, Anders Eldrup served as Permanent Secretary of State in the Ministry of Finance for 10 years. Anders Eldrup received his MA in Political Science in 1972.
DONG Energy is active along the entire energy value chain from procurement, through production and, trade to distribution. DONG Energy serves more than 1 million customers in Northern Europe, and operates offshore oil and natural gas platforms, thermal power plants as well as on and offshore wind farms. DONG Energy is a world leader in the development of efficient power plants and offshore wind farms. DONG Energy is active in a number of major R&D initiatives with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions.
The emissions-free power plant
One of DONG Energy’s main initiatives aims at completely eliminating CO2 emissions from thermal power plants. The technology is known as CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage). The idea behind CCS is to capture CO2 from power-plant exhaust gases and store it deep underground – where it originally came from as oil or coal.
DONG Energy is joining forces with a large number of European partners in a project aimed at developing technology that can absorb CO2 from flue gases. The project is called CASTOR and funded in part by the EU. The project also investigates the potential for injecting captured CO2 into mature oil fields to increase the percentage of recoverable oil.
Bio fuels for transport
One of the main solutions for reducing global CO2 emissions is to replace diesel and petrol in the transport sector with cleaner alternatives, such as bioethanol. DONG Energy has developed a promising technology, which produces bioethanol based on residual agricultural products such as straw (second generation).
The production of bioethanol is highly energy-intensive, and there are significant synergies in integrating bioethanol production with a power plant. DONG Energy is in the process of developing a large-scale demonstration site for second-generation technology next to our power plant located in Kalundborg on Zealand in Denmark.
Using waste heat from power generation in the process of producing bioethanol makes it possible to improve the energy efficiency of the entire process. This is particularly relevant in countries where waste heat is not utilized for district heating.
In addition to bio-ethanol, the process produces animal feed and a solid bio fuel that power plants can use in place of coal. Unlike other types of biomass (such as straw or waste), there are no technical restrictions as to how much of this solid bio fuel can be used to fuel a power plant. Thus, adding bioethanol production to conventional power plants holds the potential of significantly improving the CO2 performance of power plants.
