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Sakskobing-Maribo, Denmark
Money for Farmers, Efficient Energy and Better Environment for All
Imagine generating electricity from burning straw
produced on farms. That is exactly what is happening at a brand-new power
plant in Sakskobing, Denmark. Area farmers make money on the straw and
green power is produced.
Standard power plants convert only about 30 percent of their fuel into
electricity. The rest of the potential energy becomes waste heat. The heat
produced at the district heating-electric plant at Sakskobing, however,
uses heat for the heating and hot-water needs for 12,500 residential and
business customers in two Danish towns. Sixty percent of the potential
energy in the fuel goes for heat and 30 percent becomes electricity.
District heating is common in northern Europe and is one of the reasons
the countries here are more energy efficient than the United States. The
Sakskobing power plant is uncommon because in addition to its efficiency
benefits, it uses straw for its fuel. Farm wagons and trucks enter a large
metal building where robotic cranes unload the wheat and grass straw
bales. The same cranes feed the straw into the power plant.
The Sakskobing straw-fired plant is operated by
EnergiE2, a private company that operates a number of power plants in
Denmark. The company receives a higher price for electricity from this
plant because, like wind-produced electricity, no new carbon dioxide is
added to the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide produced when the straw is
burned recycles back into the crops that produce the straw. Global warming
is reduced because the power plant uses renewable fuel.
The waste ash and slag from the plant are transported back to the same
farms that produced the straw and used as a soil amendment. This is a
truly closed-cycle power system.
Jorgen Kokhauge gave us a tour of the power plant in the late afternoon.
We rode the 20 miles from where the German ferry docked in a bit over an
hour in order to get to Sakskobing before the end of the day shift at the
plant. We had a wonderful tailwind the entire way or we would not have
made it in time.
We passed many wind generators along the route. Denmark, just like the
German province of Schleswig-Holstein, gets more than 15 percent of its
electricity from the wind. Denmark also gets a growing share of its
electricity from hay-burning plants such as the one at Sakskobing. Energy
policy in this country is integrated with agricultural policy and
consequently farmers make money while the atmosphere receives less
greenhouse gas.
-- David Osterberg
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