The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's cellulosic ethanol plant. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
The US government is spending
millions of dollars to build bio-energy
plants. They’ll turn everything from
wood chips to algae into energy. But
these facilities are years behind what
they are already doing in Europe –
especially in Germany. In the first
part of our three-part series on biofuels
in Europe, Sadie Babits takes us to one
German plant that makes green energy
on a massive scale:
Transcript
The US government is spending
millions of dollars to build bio-energy
plants. They’ll turn everything from
wood chips to algae into energy. But
these facilities are years behind what
they are already doing in Europe –
especially in Germany. In the first
part of our three-part series on biofuels
in Europe, Sadie Babits takes us to one
German plant that makes green energy
on a massive scale:
We’re in Eastern Germany where crews work on what looks like brew vats.
(construction sound)
These monster tanks remind me of vats for brewing beer, except these vats will brew energy from fermenting rye, manure and bacteria.
“Basically, we’re standing here in front of the biogas and bio fertilizer production area. The big fermenter is for the biogas production.”
Oliver Lutke is our tour guide. He’s really a chemical engineer for Verbio. The company is one of Germany’s largest commercial producers of biofuels. Lutke’s been involved in turning this ethanol facility into a plant that makes ethanol and biogas. That’s methane.
“We convert everything into energy by using biological processes. This combination biogas and bioethanol production plant isn’t existing in the world.”
That’s what Verbio claims anyway. The company buys grain from some four-thousand farmers in the region. The grain gets turned into biogas and ethanol. Verbio then turns the minerals from making these biofuels into fertilizer.
That goes back to the farmers for their crops.
“We’re closing the loop to the farmer converting all the carbon to energy and the minerals going back to the farmers as fertilizer which is growing the plants used to extract the energy.”
Lutke says the company has the technology to make this industrial sized plant profitable. That baffles skeptics because it costs a lot to make green energy. You have to buy the grain. And the actual process of turning that grain into fuel can be really inefficient. By the time you’ve made one gallon of biofuel, that gallon of oil is cheaper.
Jan Liebetrau isn’t convinced Verbio has the answer. He researches bioenergy and its potential in Germany.
“If you put lots of energy into the system and you get bioethanol you’re putting more energy in than you get out.”
So making bio ethanol costs energy, which defeats the whole purpose of producing it in the first place. Lutke doesn’t see it that way. He says Verbio has the technology to make biofuels without losing energy. And because the company’s process is more efficient, Lutke says they’ve cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
“We emit 200,000 tons and the plants we are using will eat off 180,000 tons and that’s a closed cycle.”
It’s not perfect, but there’s less greenhouse gas being released than, say, from an oil refinery. Lutke is convinced bio energy will play a big role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Germany, and Europe for that matter, have become leaders on this. Germany wants to be the first industrialized nation to be powered entirely by renewable energy – a goal Germany could reach by 2050, well ahead of the U.S.
For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.