Start up! The European Entrepreneurship Summit
Brussels, 21 February 2012
Jean-Louis Kindler, co-founder of Ennesys
EIT finalist: Ennesys wants to cover your building in algae
Here's a new approach to bio-energy: Flat panels of algae growing on the side of an office building. That's the vision of a French start-up named as an EIT Awards finalist by the Climate-KIC.
It's hard to imagine that tiny algae could generate enough energy to heat a building, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and clean wastewater. Yet at Ennesys, founded in January 2010 by entrepreneurs Jean-Louis Kindler and Pierre Tauzinat, the technology is being developed to do just that.
The French company's vision involves installing on a building's facade a series of thin panels, known as photobioreactors, in which algae are added to wastewater to generate energy. The flat panels are "like water tanks that are just a few centimetres thin," explains Kindler. "The algae give the water a green colour," he adds, keen to reassure anyone concerned about what panels of wastewater would look like on the side of an office building.
The algae grow by feeding off the nitrogen, potassium and potash in the wastewater and absorbing carbon dioxide emitted from the building - for example, from the central heating system. This not only treats the wastewater but also produces hydrogen, algae oil and biomass. The energy generated can be used to heat or power the building.
"In many ways, we're replicating what happened naturally hundreds of millions of years ago," says Kindler. Algae, or "phytoplankton in the oceans captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, grew, fossilized and turned into fossil fuels. We're doing the same, but taking out the phytoplankton at a much earlier stage and therefore making the cycle much shorter."
The algae-to-energy route is a small but vibrant part of the emerging biofuels industry worldwide. But Ennesys is unusual in working on such an energy solution specifically for integration into buildings. "Architects have drawn up plans where a building's power is supplied by algae," Kindler noted. "But until now, the technology has not existed to turn their concepts into reality."
Ennysys began in 2010, as a joint venture between a Los Angeles-based algae-services company, OriginOil Inc, and Pacific Junction Corp., a technology company co-founded by Kindler and Tauzinat. The two men are serial entrepreneurs, with backgrounds in a wide range of industrial technology development.
Their next step is installing an Ennesys demonstrator in Paris' La Defense business district by March 2012. If that proves successful, the company has its eye on lots of potential business, buoyed by the introduction of new energy-efficiency laws in France. As of 2012, all new public buildings in France must consume no more energy than 50 kilowatt-hours per square metre a year; by 2020 they are supposed to produce more energy than they use. These regulations provide the company with "virtually unlimited business opportunities," according to Kindler.
To illustrate how much energy an Ennesys system can generate, Kindler takes the example of a 10-storey office building of about 10,000 square metres surface area. "If we can cover 3,000 to 4,000 square metres of the external walls, we can generate about 40 kilowatt-hours per square metre per year." That is up to 80 per cent of the building's energy requirements under the new law.
The advantage of the system, Kindler says, include the fact that the algae required are produced locally, so it's an economically viable option. Unlike other alternative energy solutions for buildings, he says, the energy generated can be stored and used at a later date. The wastewater is cleaned enough to be used for watering plants or in the bathroom. And CO2 emissions are significantly reduced.
Ennesys expects to sign its first commercial contracts within two months of launching the demonstrator, with first deliveries around the middle of 2013. "We are in talks for around 20 different projects with potential customers, but they are waiting until they are able to touch and see the system," Kindler said.
"No matter how much we tell them and how much detail we give them, they have to see it. Seeing is believing.
Read more about this finalist: The Finalists - Just the Facts
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Organised in cooperation with the Science|Business Innovation Board |