Picture: Thomas Peter
Johannesburg – BMW South Africa’s target of powering its production process 100 percent from sustainable energy by 2020 has received a boost with the motor manufacturer this month receiving the first green energy from the Bio2Watt biogas energy plant in Bronkhorspruit.
It means between 25 percent and 30 percent of the electricity requirements at its Rosslyn plant will now be generated from renewable sources.
This follows BMW SA last year signing a power purchasing agreement with Bio2Watt, the first commercial viable biogas project in South Africa. The Bio2Watt project relies on organic waste from the Beefcor feedlot in Bronkhorstspruit, one of the largest feedlots in the country.
Tim Abbott, the managing director of BMW SA, said on Friday that the plan was to transition the firm’s production facilities to be powered 100 percent from renewable sources by 2020.
“It’s a tall order. In terms of the deal with Bio2Watt, we will take 3 megawatts (MW) to 4MW of the 12MW we are using per hour. The plant will not get everything it needs from Bio2Watt because it can’t produce enough, but we will be looking at other renewable sources as well,” he said.
Abbott said 50 percent of the energy needs of BMW’s Spartanburg plant in the US came from methane from landfill sites. He said there was a landfill site in Rosslyn next to BMW SA’s plant and the City of Tshwane was keen to look at that as a possible solution.
“That is probably where we will look next. We are just in very early discussions but the City of Tshwane is very keen to talk to us in terms of helping to supply that (methane) into our plant,” he said.
Abbott previously indicated that BMW SA would also look at the possibility of using wind and solar power.
But Abbott said on Friday that wind in the Rosslyn area was “a non-starter” because of the lack of consistent wind. But they were looking at the entire plant to see whether solar power could run parts of it.
“We have to find another 7.5MW of sustainable energy an hour somewhere and that’s our programme going forward. The next step is a slow journey. Solar power is still quite expensive as a commodity in South Africa,” he said.
Abbott said BMW SA would be interested in taking more power from Bio2Watt.
Sean Thomas, the chief executive of Bio2Watt, said the plan was to expand its Bronkhorstspruit facility provided that over six months to a year it consistently got more organic waste.
Thomas said the line Bio2Watt had built to feed the power produced at the plant into the Eskom grid catered for 12MW an hour and the plant was currently only producing 4.4MW an hour.
He said there was a level of scepticism from other stakeholders about the project because it was the first of its kind in the country. But having BMW SA as a partner on the project created a level of credibility, which as a start-up company, Bio2Watt would not have had initially.
Thomas said he started Bio2Watt in 2007 when he left SA Breweries with the intention of producing power by 2010. He attributed the delay in the plant producing power to licensing and regulatory issues.
http://gbpp.org/en/2015/10/10410