Forget oil, gas or electricity: in this town of 1,200 people about fifteen kilometers from Mulhouse, heat is provided by this reed-like rhizome grass native to Asia. The first land was planted in 1993.
“We were really the first in France,” recalls Mathieu Dittner, former mayor of Amertsviller (since merging with Bernviller) and retired farmer. “Now it’s everywhere.”
Initially, the city uses miscanthus for its purifying properties: it reduces the amount of nitrates in the water. Then, about ten years ago, came the idea to harvest it and use it as biomass fuel in a communal boiler instead of wood.
“You have to wait 50 years for the tree to grow back, and there’s a harvest every year,” compares current mayor Patrick Pott, while in the field behind him long golden stalks are cut into a cloud. Dust.
Twenty-seven hectares are cultivated by a dozen farmers who sell a ton of miscanthus for 110 euros. The annual harvest will heat public buildings and about 70 homes.
A good deal
“Basically, it was intended to heat buildings such as schools and churches in the city, but some residents volunteered to connect and they did not regret it!”, the 59-year-old mayor smiles: “At a rate of 0.077 cents per kilowatt, it is more than other products, electricity, fuel oil or gas. Very little, especially at this time.”
Damien Monier, the owner of the house, which he bought ten years ago and connected to this heating system, admits that he was initially “a little worried”. But today, he is adamant: “We made a good deal”.
But its fixed price miscanthus is not the only interest: “It grows on its own, without fertilizers or phytosanitary products. It is a perennial plant”, Meyer lists. And there are many outlets: heating, horticultural mulch, animal waste, organic products…
In Bernviller, the mayor wants to use a building as insulation in renovations. In the school yard, Miscanthus shaves around the play area to cushion the children’s waterfall.
polluting
Sonia Henry, lecturer at the Soil and Environmental Laboratory at the University of Lorraine/INRAe, has been working for years on this plant, which cleans the soil of hydrocarbons.
“Miscanthus has the ability to adapt to many environments where brownfield soils are contaminated,” he explains. “Then, it shouldn’t become a miracle plant, and we see this species everywhere, otherwise we’ll retreat into the monoculture that we’re currently trying to reduce.”
About 11,000 hectares are cultivated in mainland France, a figure that has doubled since 2017, according to France Miscanthus, an association created in 2009 to structure the sector.
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