Jeremy Thorp, team leader for Project Carbon, recently took part in a study tour to the small town of Gussing in Austria, to learn more about how this town has drastically cut its carbon footprint by installing a wide range of sustainable energy solutions, including highly advanced wood fired combined heat and power plant. The study tour was organised and sponsored by Advantage West Midlands, to encourage the region to develop its own similar bold eco-projects.

At the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the town was only 7km from the border with Hungary. Gussing was suffering heavily from low employment, worker migration, poor transport links and high energy costs. The mayor introduced a highly ambitious programme of investment, focusing on making use of the one resource that the region does have an abundance of - wood - and the result 19 years later is a vibrant town which is now the home to many high tech companies. The regeneration has resulted in 1000 jobs being created, and 50 companies have moved to Gussing.

The original investment in Gussing, that has been the backbone that has made possible most of the later developments, was a district heating network, providing heat on tap to most buildings in the town. The heat for this was originally provided by several wood fueled boilers, but these have now been replaced in turn by a wood fired combined heat and power (CHP) generating station (2MWe) with the waste heat being fed into the heating network. The original wood fired boilers now provide backup heat for periods when the CHP plant is on maintenance.

This power station has been operating since 2005, and now means that Gussing provides all of its own heat and electricity from timber grown in the surrounding hills. The power station requires about two lorry loads of timber each day to operate it.

The power station uses the method of wood gasification. The wood is chipped, and the chips are then subject to high temperature which causes the volatile components to be driven of as a gas (mainly a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide). This gas is cleaned and then fed into an internal combustion engine to produce electricity. The "char" left over when the wood is heated is burned to provide the heat needed to gasify the wood. All waste heat from all processes is fed into the district heating network.

The aim of the visit was to learn lessons from this successful implementation of sustainable energy in Austria, so that similar schemes can be developed here in the UK.

Since the trip is all about saving carbon, Jeremy was concerned to minimize the carbon emissions created in traveling to Gussing. To achieve this, rather than travel by plane, which would have resulted in 380kg of carbon being emitted, Jeremy traveled by National Express coach, which resulted in emissions of only 44kg. The coach travels daily from London to Budapest, passing through France, Belgium, Southern Germany, before entering Austria and eventually arriving in Hungary. The trip as far as Vienna takes 24 hours, stopping near the city centre (as opposed to the airport which is located a 15 minute train journey from the centre). Gussing was then an additional two hour coach journey south of Vienna.

The town of Gussing has a population of about 10,000, and is dominated by a picturesque castle with a commanding view over the whole town. As a result of the innovative sustainable energy programme carried out in the town, the town is visited by 600 - 1000 eco-tourists each week. There can be no doubt that the town has benefited economically a great deal from its bold investments, in addition to the impressive carbon savings. This is ample evidence that with the right bold leadership, great things can happen.