5 Questions

1.   Please introduce yourself

I’m Marjolein Helder, an enthusiastic 28 year old from Wageningen in the Netherlands. I graduated from Wageningen University in Environmental Technology in 2008, after which I started my PhD on a technology to produce electricity from living plants. Being interested in the possibility to put this technology in society, I decided to start a company, together with my colleague David Strik, to develop products that can produce electricity from living plants: Plant-e. Apart from my work, which is my biggest hobby, I try to find time to devote to music and sports. I sing in a bigband and a choir and I play rugby. Always busy, always running, enjoying life as much as I can.

 

2.   Can you shortly describe your Green Challenge entry?

We are able to produce electricity without harvesting the plants. This means that we can combine electricity production with all kinds of other applications for the plants. And the only thing you need is activated carbon, some wires and plants! The first product we’re developing is the Green Electricity Roof. It is a green roof – which insulates your building, stores water, greens the city – that produces electricity for your house or office under the roof. After successfully introducing the Green Electricity Roof we will develop the system for remote and developing areas, so that everyone in the world who has plants and water available can have electricity: Green, clean and affordable!

 

3.   Where did you get this idea?

Assistant Professor at Wageningen University Bert Hamelers had been working on the Microbial Fuel Cell to treat wastewaster for a few years. In the Microbial Fuel Cell bacteria produce electricity from organic substances in wastewater. The problem is that the wastewater has to be pumped and not a lot of electricity is left over in the end. He realised that plants excrete organic matter continuously into the soil, where bacteria break it down, so the system would be self-sustaining as long as the plant excretes organic matter! No energy input needed, no pumping, no harvesting; just plants growing on sunlight and using the wasteproducts in the soil to produce electricity. David Strik, postdoc in Bert Hamelers' group, did the first experiments with plants in a Microbial Fuel Cell and got the system to work in the second experiment. After a few years of development of the Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell David and Marjolein (now PhD-student on the technology) realised the true potential of the system and founded Plant-e to develop products from the technology in 2009.

 

4.   Why do you want to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions? Where does your drive come from?

I have always had a general interest in the environment, wanting to do good, wanting to be sustainable, wanting to change the world even. During my study Environmental Sciences I slowly moved from the somewhat idealistic point of view to a more realistic point of view. Our economy has developed for ages, using and depending on unsustainable energy sources that emit loads of CO2. It is difficult to change that. Recent developments have, however, pressed the urgency of the matter: resources, including oil, are being depleted, oil mostly comes from unstable regions and, maybe even more worrisome, people and the environment are being exploited in the process of oil-mining. Still, I doubted for a moment when I got the chance to work on a technology that could not only produce sustainable electricity, but had the potential to become a new worldwide energy source. Can it be true? Can we really change the world? And can I help that transition towards a more sustainable economy? I decided I had to try and that was the wisest choice I could have made. This technology sounds too good to be true, but we have proven that it works in the last few years. The potential of living plants generating electricity at every spot where water and plants are available is enormous. We can do that! We can provide the world with a new electricity source, that is sustainable and literally green. Oh yes, I'm still an idealist, I still want to change the world, but my ideals have become realistic now.

 

5.   What difference will your plan make if it comes to market if you win the €500.000 Green Challenge prize?

We've come to the point where we have shown that the technology works inside the lab and out, that we can scale-up and that it can be economically feasible. But we still have a long way to go. €500.000 is a lot of money, especially when you're just starting your company. With this money we could attract two employees for Plant-e: someone to help us develop this technology for remote and developing areas and someone to focus on a large-scale energy system for the rest of the world. The sooner we start that, the sooner we can introduce this system where it's needed: in areas where people don't have electricity, where cities are too polluted to breathe, where energy supplies are unreliable… Everywhere! Why wait when we can make a change right now?