From the field to your household appliances

For those of you who don't know about the star of these paragraphs, allow me to introduce you to Miajadas. It is a municipality located in the south of Cáceres province in Spain. It is a flat area populated by holm oaks, cork oaks and scrub, and has a Mediterranean climate, with mild winters and hot summers.

These conditions have made it one of Spain's most productive areas in terms of agri-food industry. It has a population of only 10,000 people, of whom almost 40 % work in the agriculture and livestock sector and 15 % in the agri-food industry. Its economy is mainly built on irrigation agriculture, and the main crop is the tomato. In fact, the town of Miajadas is known as the "Tomato Capital of Europe".

I know what you're thinking though: what have tomatoes got to do with energy?  Well, much more than you might think.

Think of the process of producing energy from biomass as a closed circuit. Energy is generated by the combustion of plant waste that heats the water. This waste comes from nature (residues from agricultural or forestry work, for example) and is then returned to nature when, once its energy has been released through combustion, the resulting ashes are used to produce fertiliser for the fields. The process doesn't stop there. The raw materials that will power the Miajadas biomass plant will again be taken from these same lands.

However, the cycle goes much further. Agriculture and biomass in Miajadas are connected in more ways than one. The plant provides the town with clean energy and work, and the town in turn provides the plant with the agricultural and forest waste it needs. 

Biomass is nature's energy. It is a source of high-quality energy that is present in the life all around us. In the case of the Miajadas plant, we obtain the energy through the combustion of agricultural and forestry waste. Using it therefore not only utilises waste, it also helps to prevent fires and clean forests. Biomass can also be obtained from livestock waste or waste from the food, timber and paper industries.

It is 100 % renewable and reduces the use of fossil fuels. To give you an idea of just how much — an average biomass plant can prevent 200,000 tonnes of CO2 a year that would have been emitted by a coal-fired power plant. In addition, the CO2 emissions from biomass plants are neutral overall, because the emissions are equivalent to those absorbed by the plants used as raw material over their lifetime. Even so, the gases resulting from the combustion pass through an air filter before they leave the plant.

Biomass can be used to generate electricity and heating for homes, steam for industrial processes and biofuels for use in transport. This renewable energy generates employment and promotes development in rural areas, given its link to the land. This is not only through the hiring of the staff needed to manage the plant, but also through the parallel investment in machinery and infrastructure.

Amazing, right? In the following infographic we will explain how electricity can be generated from biomass.