The energy transition requires more than innovative technologies. It requires people willing to challenge established thinking and explore new solutions.
Thomas Bleul, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Spanner Re², has dedicated much of his professional life to renewable energy and wood gasification. Together with Helmut Spanner, he founded Spanner Re² in 2006 with the vision of making renewable energy economically competitive while contributing to a more resilient and decentralized energy system.
In this interview, he shares how he entered the renewable energy sector, what continues to motivate him today, and what Spanner Re² stands for.
How did you join the company?
I returned from the United States in 2003. At that time, Germany was experiencing tremendous momentum in renewable energy. Biogas, photovoltaics, wind power and pellet heating systems were expanding rapidly, and industry exhibitions were packed with visitors.
My interest in the topic, however, started much earlier. I grew up in Furth, a municipality where local energy fairs already existed during my youth. People presented self-built solar systems, the first electric vehicles appeared, and early photovoltaic installations were being deployed.
At the same time, I studied mechanical engineering in Landshut. Many professors still came from the conventional energy sector, some directly from the nuclear industry. The prevailing opinion was often that renewable energy would never play a major role.
Later, within the Spanner Group, we developed an "Agenda 2010" initiative to identify future business opportunities. Renewable energy was one of the areas we explored. Our thinking was straightforward: if we could meet the demanding quality standards of the automotive industry, manufacture competitively and manage large-scale production, we should be able to apply those capabilities to renewable energy technologies as well.
Initially, we evaluated a wide range of technologies, including solar tracking systems, inverters and support solutions for biogas plants. In the end, we found our place in biomass and, more specifically, wood gasification.
One presentation from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) had a particularly strong impact on me. It demonstrated how much solar energy reaches Earth every day compared to the total energy demand of humanity. As an engineer, the comparison was easy to visualize: if the total available renewable energy potential were 3.6 meters high, humanity would only need one millimeter of it.
That realization convinced me that the energy transition is technically achievable. The real challenge lies in making effective use of the available energy.
For me, biomass is not a competitor to photovoltaics and battery storage. It is the complement that enables energy generation when solar and wind resources are not sufficient.
What still excites you about your job today?
Wood gasification has been an enormous challenge over the past 20 years.
For many years, we followed markets around the world that were strongly influenced by feed-in tariffs and subsidy programs. We built partnerships, installed systems, created references and established service networks. Yet when support schemes ended, many of those markets disappeared shortly afterward.
Today, our business is much more stable.
We increasingly focus on locations where large amounts of unused biomass are available and where electricity is either expensive or unreliable. Particularly exciting are projects where our systems replace diesel generators or liquefied gas solutions.
In many of these applications, our technology is not only environmentally beneficial but also economically competitive. Some projects achieve payback periods of three to four years, and in certain cases even less.
That does not mean the technology sells itself. Wood gasification comes with a certain level of complexity. That is why we continuously work on making our systems more robust, easier to operate and more accessible for customers.
What motivates me most is the satisfaction of knowing that we are making a real contribution to the energy transition.
Not on paper.
But through machines that operate every day and replace fossil fuels.
What does our company stand for?
We used to have a slogan:
"We make renewable energy competitive."
To me, that still perfectly describes what Spanner Re² stands for today.
Our goal is to provide technologies that enable companies and communities to switch to renewable energy without having to accept permanently higher energy costs.
Using regionally available biomass, we can generate electricity, heat or wood gas exactly when it is needed. In doing so, we complement photovoltaics and battery storage during periods when other renewable energy sources are unable to provide sufficient power.
At the same time, value creation remains within the region.
Previously unused biomass residues are transformed into energy, jobs and additional sources of income. That is what I consider the true strength of our technology.
Renewable. Decentralized. Flexible. Economically viable.
These are the characteristics that future energy systems will require.
Looking Ahead
The energy transition will not be achieved by a single technology alone.
It will require intelligent combinations of different renewable solutions working together.
For Thomas Bleul, biomass is an essential part of that future: storable, controllable and independent of weather conditions.
That is exactly what Spanner Re² has been working on for almost two decades: turning regionally available residues into energy whenever it is needed.
Learn more about our wood gasification and decentralized energy solutions: https://re2.energy/en