City Turning Cheese Into Electricity for 1500 Inhabitants

Generating electricity from cheese sounds like a plot from an Asterix comic book, but that is exactly what is happening at a new power plant in the French Alps. According to the The Daily Telegraph. a by-product of Beaufort cheese, skimmed whey, is converted into biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, at the plant in Albertville, in Savoie.

Bacteria are added to the whey to produce the gas, which is then used to generate electricity that is sold to the energy company EDF. “Whey is our fuel,” said Francois Decker of Valbio, the company that designed and built the power station, which opened in October.

After full-fat milk is used to make Beaufort cheese, whey and cream are left over. The cream is taken to make ricotta cheese, butter and protein powder. The residual skimmed whey is then placed in a tank with bacteria, where natural fermentation produces methane in the same way that the gas is produced in cows’ stomachs. The gas is then fed through an engine that heats water to 90C and generates electricity.

The plant will produce about 2.8 million kilowatt-hours per year, enough electricity to supply a community of 1,500 people, Mr Decker told Le Parisien newspaper. It is not the first cheese-based power station, but one of the largest. Valbio built its first prototype plant 10 years ago. In Somerset, Wyke Farms generates electricity from waste cheese, cow manure and leftover crops.