The Willem Alexander plant in Buggenum, Netherlands was commissioned in 1994, making it one of the first commercial IGCC plants in the world. The project was built and operated by Demkolec BV and is now owned by NUON. The plant is a 253 MW (net) IGCC utilizing a Shell gasifier to gasify 2,000 metric tons of coal per day.

The plant served as an EU demonstration plant during initial years of operation and was used to test different operating conditions and various feedstock with commercial scale. After encountering operating problems mainly related to turbines in its initial years, design changes were made in 1997 that significantly improved plant performance.

Recently, there has been interest in altering the fuel mix at Buggenum to include biomass as well as coal and to produce biofuels in addition to electricity. The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO examined these subjects in 2002 (see link below).