Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Sankt Ottilien (Agenzia Fides) – Today 15 July at the Benedictine Abbey of the Missionaries of St. Ottilien, work begins to build a bio-gas plant for the production of electrical power. The abbey compound, which includes a high school with 770 pupils, a 120 bed guest house, the monastery building with about 110 monks, several workshops, a refectory, a printing press and a farm with 180 cows, consumes an annual 1/4 million kilowatt (kWh) of electricity. The new plant is expected to produce an annual 2 million kWh of regenerated power. This means the monks will produce 150% of the power needed and save about 60.000 Euro every year in electricity costs. With the new plant which will produce heat using wood, grass, maize and sewage, all produced in the monastery grounds, and electrical power with other natural resources produced by in the grounds, the Benedictines will be producers of ecologically sustainable electricity and also active promoters of creation protection. Besides the construction of the bio-gas plant, work has also started to modernise the monastery's cattle sheds, of which, when the work is completed, from a special viewers platform, visitors will be able to view the functioning. (MS) (Agenzia Fides 15/07/2010)
