9/11/2018 Innovative biomass plant fires up Austrian economic backwater | Financial Times
EU energy
Innovative biomass plant fires up Austrian economic backwater
Small town in the far east of the country has its fortunes transformed by renewable energy
Kester Eddy NOVEMBER 26, 2014
The passing motorist will rarely give the tiny village of Urbersdorf, in southern Burgenland, a
second glance. Its houses and traditional-looking barn are neat and tidy but appear
unremarkable for the region, let alone Austria.
Except that the barn has a very non-traditional function. Every day, a local farm hand stops by,
jumps on to a tractor and pushes a few tonnes of wood chips into a hopper, before closing up
and leaving for other work.
Welcome to Urbersdorf’s mini-district heating plant, where a computer-controlled system
meters and bills the 50 households and lights the wood burner as required.
Built in 1996 at a cost just short of €1m, the plant was an early example of district authority
efforts to use local renewable energy resources.
At the head of this drive was Peter Vadasz, then mayor of Güssing, the small town just west of
Urbersdorf, and Reinhard Koch, his chief engineer.
At the time, Güssing – just 8km from the Hungarian border – was a social and economic
backwater. “When I became mayor in 1992, this was the poorest part of Austria. After 45 years
alongside the Iron Curtain we had high unemployment and, even worse, a very high rate of
youth migration,” says Mr Vadasz. “Seventy per cent of the [employed] population worked in
Vienna.”
Mr Koch had already implemented various energy-saving programmes in Güssing, and pointed
to the region’s forests – many left unattended with wood rotting on the ground – and to the
potential for producing biomass on the surrounding farmland.
“The people living here needed oil and electricity for houses, fuel for cars,” he says. “I thought it
was crazy. We were buying energy from outside when we had the resources to produce it.”
Lacking finance, progress was initially limited to pilot schemes, such as the one at Urbersdorf.
But in 1995, with Austria’s accession to the European Union, Burgenland was able to access EU
funding.
Güssing immediately started building a heating plant, but for 4,000 inhabitants – rather than a
village – this required careful co-ordination.
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9/11/2018 Innovative biomass plant fires up Austrian economic backwater | Financial Times
“We connected all public buildings, schools, kindergartens and the town hall to the system, and
invited public discussion,” says Mr Vadasz. “Once a street had 50 per cent willing to join, we
offered connections to every home.”
Peter Vadasz: ‘We connected all public
buildings, schools and kindergartens to the
system’
Not only were heating fees trimmed, but money that had previously flowed out of the region was
diverted to those operating the heating system and firms harvesting the wood.
Furthermore, with cheap energy available, Güssing attracted new businesses, most particularly
in the timber and parquet floor industries, which need heat to dry wood over long periods. The
incoming timber companies in turn produced a valuable byproduct – wood offcuts, another
source of biomass.
“We had a problem with infrastructure – we don’t have any highway or railway. So we made a
kind of package. We could offer land, water, sewage and heating systems [to incoming business]
– all within 10 minutes,” says Mr Koch.
As a result, between 1997 and 2005 Güssing attracted some 50 new companies, creating more
than 1,000 new jobs.
As word of Güssing’s success spread, new opportunities appeared. Most notably, the town
teamed up with Hermann Hofbauer, a professor at the Vienna University of Technology, to build
a €10m wood gasification plant based on a unique technology.
Rather than merely burning wood to heat water, this uses a system to convert the biomass into a
high-value mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen.
While in Güssing this mixture powers a gas engine to produce heat and electricity, the plans are
to process this further into higher-value fuels. Austrian scientists, including a handful on site at
Güssing, are researching potential technologies.
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9/11/2018 Innovative biomass plant fires up Austrian economic backwater | Financial Times
Mr Koch is now managing director of the European Centre for Renewable Energy, a non-profit
institution promoting green energy. He says the “Güssing model” is an example for the rest of
Austria and the world.
While green energy needs subsidies for the initial investment, it can operate profitably, Mr Koch
insists. “This model is a philosophy – if you have local, renewable energy, you create jobs, and if
you create jobs, you have people,” he argues.
“These people need doctors, education, sports and cultural things. So you have to build up an
infrastructure, and we’ve done that in Güssing.”
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