Belgian court refers 3 Project One emissions questions to EU court
The permit court has paused 3 appeals indefinitely while it awaits answers on whether the plant’s assessment must cover indirect greenhouse-gas emissions.
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The permit court has paused 3 appeals indefinitely while it awaits answers on whether the plant’s assessment must cover indirect greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Flemish Council for Permit Disputes has referred 3 questions about indirect greenhouse-gas emissions from Ineos’s Project One to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The permit court issued an interim ruling in 3 appeals and paused its proceedings indefinitely until the EU court answers.
The appeals concern an environmental permit issued on 7 January 2024, and a 30 July 2024 decision that withdrew it and granted a replacement. In a 8 November 2026 article, The Guardian said the referral took place that week.
Project One is an ethane cracker at the port of Antwerp in Belgium. It is designed to turn ethane supplied from the United States into ethylene, a building block for plastics. Ineos says it intends to obtain the fracked ethane from a selection of US suppliers.
The Flemish court wants to know whether, and to what extent, the EU Environmental Impact Assessment Directive requires the project’s assessment to cover emissions from its energy and raw-material supply chain, as well as emissions from later burning plastic waste made using its ethylene. The court describes these as Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.
The court says it is unclear whether those emissions count as indirect climate effects of the cracker under the directive. It has asked for an interpretation of the law, not ruled that the assessment is inadequate or the permits invalid.
Environmental law firm ClientEarth and 14 other NGOs are challenging the project. They argue that its assessment failed to calculate emissions from the supply of ethane produced through fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas by cracking underground rock with pressurized liquid.
ClientEarth lawyer Gautier Rolland said the omission gives an inaccurate picture of the project’s climate impact. He argued that increasingly strong case law around the world puts the project on shaky ground. Ineos said its assessment has been updated and subjected to extensive regulatory scrutiny, and that it will defend the project and its environmental performance on the evidence.
The EU court will consider the questions, after which the Flemish court will resume considering the appeals.
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