February 2008
Maria van der Hoeven , Minister of Economic Affairs, will unload the first consignment of coffee husks for generating Green Energy at Essent's Amer power plant in Geertruidenberg. This consignment of 3,200 tonnes is enough to provide the small town of Geertruidenberg, where the company is based, with electricity for four months. In seven years time this project could grow to 250,000 tonnes of coffee husks, enough to supply all the households in a town the size of Eindhoven with power. Worldwide there are no less than a million tonnes of coffee husks available, enough to cover the electricity requirement of 7% of all 6 million Dutch households. It is the first time anywhere in the world that coffee husks have been used to generate Green Energy.
Development organisation Solidaridad and energy company Essent are today taking an important step towards large-scale use of agricultural residues to provide electricity. The Doen Foundation is supporting the project because it is making a real contribution to solving the climate problem. The arrival of the first ship carrying pressed coffee husks from Brazil is the start of a new, sustainable form of biomass. Agricultural residues have the advantage that they do not compete with food provision and do not require any extra land usage. The World Watch Institute estimates that the whole of the world's agricultural and forestry residues produces 700 million tonnes of dry material. A third of this is enough to provide every household in Europe with power.
The coffee husks are a residual product from (Brazilian) coffee growing and are suitable for replacing coal or other fossil fuels to produce electricity in Essent power plants. In the short term it is possible with this innovation to achieve at least a 90 per cent reduction in CO2 compared with an average Dutch electric power plant.
The skins come from sustainable, certified coffee growing (UTZ Certified), so the origin is known. The farmers augment their income and, moreover, become joint-owners of the export company Fair Biomass Brazil BV. The farmers utilise the value of the coffee husks as fertiliser or they utilise its value as combustion material and compensate with other fertilisers.
The collaboration between Essent and Solidaridad has also been consolidated by the desire to link together the existing quality systems of the two parties: the Essent Green Gold Label and the UTZ Certified label.
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