Dirk, his wife Karin and their two children, recently stayed at the Molenheide holiday park in Houthalen, Limburg province. As they relaxed in their pristine chalet, they didn’t realise that the park has a somewhat unusual source for its energy supply – pig manure.

The electricity powering the TV, cooker, fridge, microwave and all other electrical installations in the park’s wooden bungalows comes from pig waste. “To be honest, I don’t give much thought to sources of energy, but all credit to the owners here for coming up with such a novel idea,” says Dirk, a teacher from Antwerp.

It is feared that many European countries, including Belgium, will struggle to meet the EU’s 20% target for the use of renewables, such as solar and wind, by 2020. But Molenheide, a family-owned park that attracts 300,000 visitors annually, has stolen a march by introducing its own system of cutting CO2 emissions.

According to Marc Vanherk, sales manager at Molenheide, the bio-fuel system it has used since the spring of 2009 enables the park to slash its emissions output by an estimated 3,000 tonnes per year – and helps stabilise the amount it spends each year on electricity. The hope is that cost savings made to the park's annual energy bill will eventually be passed on to its customers.

How it works

Methane gases from pig manure, crops and basic agricultural “leftovers” produced at a nearby farm is processed and transported via a pipeline to Molenheide, where it supplies virtually all its electricity needs.

The electricity is used to heat bungalows on the site and also the park’s swimming pools which, previously consumed 350,000 litres of oil every year. Even in the event of a power outage, “this unique CO2-neutral power source” ensures that anyone staying at the park will never be without electricity, explains Vanherk.

“I think what we are doing here is really quite unique,” he says. “This is one of the biggest holiday parks in the whole country, and we are sourcing our electricity from one of the most reliable and environmental-friendly forms of energy. The method we use produces electricity for what effectively is a small village. If anyone else in Belgium can make such a claim, I would like to know who.”

The groundbreaking system was introduced after the park owners struck a deal with local farmer Piet Lavrijsen just 1.5 kilometres away. “Piet had a lot of experience in composting,” says Vanherk. “With fuel prices seemingly forever on the rise, we saw this as an opportunity to come to some arrangement to try to cut our annual energy costs and become less reliant on old-fashioned fossil fuels.”

The park had to change their electrical installations and install a special engine that itself operates on a mix of methanes and bio-fuel in order to pump the power source from the farm. “It required a lot of technical changes,” confirms Vanherk. “An underground connection links the farm to our park and to the furnace that powers our network of buildings and pools. It’s one of the most modern installations in Belgium.”

Molenheide is now entirely run from renewable energy, putting them, says Vanherk, “at the forefront of efforts to cut CO2 emissions.” He sees this as a great advantage. “There is currently great uncertainty about the security of the energy supply, something highlighted last year when supplies to some EU countries like Slovenia were seriously disrupted by the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The same could happen again but, because our energy is sourced from bio-fuels, we know we won’t be affected.”

www.molenheide.be