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In German villages, small-scale initiatives serve as examples for broader applications. A new guild of energy farmers demonstrates that sustainability and profitability do not have to be contradictory.
When energy farmer Martin Laß digs up the street for his new district heating customers, it proves to be highly worthwhile. In addition to the district heating pipes, glass fiber cables and power lines for electric cars are simultaneously installed. According to his plans, the 8,000-resident community of Gettorf in Schleswig-Holstein will be climate-neutral ten years earlier than mandated by the state government.
The village serves as a real-world laboratory where the agricultural engineer showcases what a resilient complete supply with renewable energy could look like. It has been almost 20 years since Renate Künast, as the Federal Minister of Agriculture, promised farmers to be the "oil barons of tomorrow." While this comparison may suggest greater wealth than most farmers can generate on their often leased lands, pioneers like Martin Laß demonstrate that environmental protection, supply security, and profitability do not have to be contradictory.
Today, energy is the second most important source of income for agriculture. As energy producers and service providers, farmers play a significant role in the success of the energy transition. They have the land to produce biomass and space for open-field photovoltaics and wind turbines. As regional, renewable energy hubs, they can supply surrounding villages and communities with green electricity and heat. The old debate about competing for land between energy and food production has largely been put to rest by agrivoltaics. It is clear that the expansion of renewables does not have to come at the expense of food cultivation.
Around 20 years ago, Martin Laß took over his parents' farm. Since then, he has been raising pigs and engaging in arable farming. Fourteen years ago, he added a biogas plant that generates electricity and heat. With this journey from biogas operator to energy entrepreneur, Martin Laß convinced the jury of this year's Ceres Award, an industry award that honors particularly innovative farmers.
Laß's success model could set an example elsewhere. The centerpiece is an 80 by 40-meter biogas storage, resembling a giant white whale in the landscape of the Tüttendorf community. The so-called "Tüttendorf Egg" has an impressive size of 44,000 cubic meters, is pressureless, and stores biogas with a capacity of 90,000 kilowatt-hours - enough energy for an electric car to circumnavigate the Earth 15 times.
Due to this storage, the largest of its kind in Germany, Laß recently received an award from the Biogas Association as one of the best biogas plants in Germany. The charming aspect of his plant is that it is essentially a small regenerative storage power plant, enabling a continuous and fail-safe energy supply with 100% renewable energy. Electricity, gas, and heat are thoughtfully integrated. In addition to the gas storage, there are additional heat buffer storages and satellite combined heat and power plants. This system achieves extreme flexibility in electricity generation, ensuring that the CHP engines only start when electricity is most needed, and prices on the electricity market are at their highest. This might be because the wind turbines are idle during a lull or clouds cover the sun.
Until now, fossil-fueled gas power plants have taken on the task of buffering these so-called dark lulls and distributing energy over long distances. On a regional level, however, this can be done much more sustainably because the waste heat generated during electricity production can either be stored or directly fed into the local district heating network. In Germany, there are already around 9,700 biogas plants contributing to nearly six percent of electricity generation. If two-thirds of these plants were converted into regenerative storage power plants following Martin Laß's model, it could replace half of all coal-fired power plants lost due to the coal phase-out.
However, decarbonization is still in its early stages in Gettorf. Currently, Laß provides around 200 households, a school and sports complex, the local tennis club, and a large hospice with cost-effective and reliable district heating from manure, horse manure, and renewable resources from the surrounding fields. The complete supply of the village exists only in his plans. The most challenging aspects are the approval and building regulations, especially the complex bureaucratic process of laying cables and pipes from biogas generation to the consumer, requiring consent from the municipality and all stakeholders.
Germany's flagship energy village in Wildpoldsried, Allgäu, has been in business even longer. Farmer Wendelin Einsiedler built his first wind turbine in 1995 and now operates 18 wind park facilities throughout Bavaria. With wind, sun, biogas, and hydropower, the 2,600-resident village produces eight times more electricity than it consumes. The village heating - a district heating network with pellet heating and biogas combined heat and power plants - supplies 80 buildings, ten businesses, and 170 apartments with heat and also generates additional electricity.
Noise disturbance? Shadow casting from the giant rotors? Landscape cluttered with turbines? In Wildpoldsried, the majority of citizens support the completed energy transition. About 400 citizens are involved in the nine facilities on Wildpoldsried's land, earning money from them. Solar and photovoltaic systems are visible on many roofs. The interest in participating is enormous and extends far beyond the community borders.
Over 100 visitor groups from around the world come to the village every year to take home one or the other building block for the energy transition. Councilor Thomas Pfluger and his colleagues make great efforts to meet the many inquiries from pilgrims. They know that those who have visited see what is already achievable today. This motivates them to take home one or another energetic building block and implement it there.
Near Rouen, the paper company DS Smith is accelerating its decarbonization. The global leader in fiber-based packaging solutions will replace its coal boiler with a biomass unit at its Normandy factory. The investment, close to 90 million euros, will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 100,000 tons per year.
Great energy consumer, the paper industry is increasingly adopting environmentally friendly practices. In Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen (Seine-Maritime), the British company DS Smith, one of the world's leading suppliers of fiber-based packaging, has taken a step towards decarbonization by transforming the energy supply of its paper mill. The annual production capacity of the mill is 280,000 tons of 100% recycled paper, mainly used for cardboard.
The coal boiler on the site will be replaced by a new biomass boiler. With a capacity of 56 MW, the new boiler will reduce the factory's emissions by 99,000 tons of CO2 per year and provide at least 80% of the heat demand. Operated by Engie Solutions, it will be fueled by 94,000 tons of biofuel, with 30% coming from by-products of the factory and 70% from wood waste.
"Our ambition is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030, compared to our 2019 levels, to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. On the Rouen site, the carbon impact represents 73% less CO2 than the current situation, contributing to 8% of our 2030 target," explains Miles Roberts, the CEO of DS Smith, who visited the site to observe the progress of the future installation, which is expected to be fully operational by the first quarter of 2025. The investment amounts to nearly 90 million euros, supported by 15 million euros from Ademe. The group is also considering the installation of a steam turbine capable of producing 10 MW of electricity.
"The DS Smith Rouen project will lead to a 5.2% reduction in the total emissions of the paper industry in 2022. With this Normandy initiative, the decarbonized heat production rate for the entire French paper industry will increase from 62% to 63.7%," calculates Paul-Antoine Lacour, general delegate of Copacel, the French Union of carton, paper, and cellulose industries.
Founded in 1940 in London, DS Smith, with a turnover of 7.2 billion euros, is present in 34 countries and employs around 30,000 people. In France, the company has 35 production sites and 4,500 employees producing 3 billion packages. The Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray paper mill, founded in 1928 and acquired in 2019, is the largest in the group, accounting for 7% of "corrugated paper" (PPO) production.
With its dual activity in paper and cardboard, it was the first factory in France to produce lightweight recycled corrugation used in the manufacture of corrugated cardboard. With 250 employees, the 80-hectare site also produces lightweight, medium, and dual-use papers for the packaging of consumer goods, e-commerce, and industrial products.