It is a flagship project for waste recycling, as the biogas plant in Göhrener Tannen revolutionizes the way we think about and utilize waste. SAS sets new standards in energy production and makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

SAS, the Schweriner Waste Disposal and Street Cleaning Company, operates in many areas. These include, of course, waste disposal and cleaning, but also the sale of garden products such as compost, bark mulch, wood chips, or gravel.
The biogas plant, which was commissioned in 2014 in the Schwerin Industrial Park, is another essential area – and forward-looking, as it is an important part of the renewable energy infrastructure in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and especially in Schwerin:
The biogas plant is one of the most modern of its kind in Germany. The SAS structure includes a digester in which organic waste from the bio-waste bin and green waste are decomposed. Every single ton of garden waste, potato peels, or apple cores contributes to this process. Twenty bio-waste bins can eventually produce enough electricity for a four-person household per year.
The biogas plant is especially busy after the Christmas season, when around 60 tons of Christmas trees arrive load by load at the plant. A wheel loader tips the conifers into the shredder – and the Christmas tree is no more. To speed up the process, pre-composted material is added during shredding. The mountains of trees quickly shrink to much more manageable piles. The shredded material then needs to decompose further. This takes place at 65 degrees Celsius for around 15 days. Finally, the material is sieved: anything smaller than 10 millimeters is finished compost. Everything else is used to compost more green waste – a perfect cycle that produces biogas. This biogas is converted into electricity and heat in the combined heat and power plant.
Each year, experienced employees produce about 7.000 tons of fresh compost and 9.000 tons of liquid digestate for agriculture. The resulting biogas can generate up to 3 million kilowatt-hours annually. This corresponds to the energy needs of about 1,500 households in Schwerin.

The electricity is fed into the public grid, while the heat is used for heating buildings or industrial processes. This way, renewable energy is generated from renewable raw materials. The use of biogas saves fossil fuels and reduces CO2 emissions.

Overall, the Göhrener Tannen biogas plant is a model project for sustainable energy production. It demonstrates that it is possible to make an important contribution to climate protection in Schwerin with modern technology and innovative concepts – and how agriculture and energy production can be sensibly linked to ensure a sustainable and environmentally friendly energy supply.