Straw saves the day in Poland

BERLIN:The small Polish town of Kisielice hopes it can break Poland's addiction to coal-powered energy.

With 94 per cent of Polish energy derived from domestically-mined coal, the residents of Kisielice in northeast Poland are calling for others to follow their lead and adopt an alternative, cleaner fuel source: straw.

"Our new power station is fuelled entirely by straw and supplies 70 per cent of the community's energy," said Mayor Tomasz Koprowiak.

The recent EU climate deal made a key concession to Poland, giving free carbon credits for its coal power stations until 2019, to enable a transition to cleaner energy production.

The 6,500 residents of Kisielice are convinced that they have the answer already. Four years after the new three megawatt heating and warm-water facility was brought online, the sums are convincing. Supplied with excess straw from local farmers, the mayor says the new system has saved the town around 1.3 million zloty (€340,000) annually.

Environmentalists are happy because it replaced three other power stations: one coal-burning and the other two oil-burning. The Kisielice plant produces up to 60 per cent less CO2 than the plants it replaced.

It's a win-win situation for the region, too: the farmers earn with contracts to deliver 3,000 tonnes of straw a year, money that stays in the community.

The city benefits from the initiative too: the local school, for instance, has saved zloty 51,000 (€14,000) on its heating bills.

"You don't have to be an environmental campaigner to turn to green energy," said Mr Koprowiak. "The people are simply interested in lower heating bills. Economy and ecology sometimes do go hand-in-hand."