09/26/2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
Expansion of district heating networks, decarbonization of heat generation and upgrading of power grids: Regional utilities face enormous tasks.
"We have to enter into discussion with the public," said Andreas Feicht, CEO of Cologne-based Rheinenergie, at a press briefing titled "Quo vadis kommunale Wärmeplanung" (Quo vadis municipal heat planning) ahead of the Association of Municipal Companies' VKU-Stadtwerkekongress 2023. The issues to be considered in connection with the municipal heat transition, Feicht said, go far beyond energy policy. Questions of the private indebtedness possibilities up to age precaution would have to be thought along here and discussed with the concerning ones together.
That the topic heat supply must be discussed, that is also for the VKU managing director Ingbert Liebing out of question. After the crisis mode of the past months, he said, it was now time for energy suppliers to switch to transformation mode. In the area of heat supply, the need for action is particularly great in view of the still very low share of renewables, at around 18 percent. And because heat is a local product, the topic is particularly interesting for municipal utilities.
According to Andreas Feicht, regional suppliers initially face four key questions:
- Where to expand district heating network,
- where to rely on heat pumps?
- In which areas can standalone solutions be used?
- And: should hydrogen play a role?
Each of these questions is associated with cost decisions.
Pipeline construction, decarbonization, power grid upgrades
In the area of district heating, two factors have to be considered here, he said: On the one hand, the network expansion - in the case of Rheinenergie, 200 kilometers of network expansion are planned, with Ingbert Liebing estimating the average cost per meter for pipeline construction alone at around 3,000 euros - and on the other hand, the decarbonization of heat through the construction of large-scale heat pumps and other renewable heat sources.
In the area of heat pumps, regional utilities would have to reckon with costs for upgrading the power grids. This is also necessary for electromobility anyway. "We need to bring more electricity to the city," Feicht said. For the areas where houses are to be heated with heat pumps in the future, he said, one must also consider and openly discuss the costs behind the electricity meter and the performance of tenants, owners and companies. The applies likewise to those areas and buildings, in which neither a district heating connection nor a heat pump is meaningful.
Equally cost-intensive is the building reorganization: The assumption, with district heating supplied houses does not have to be reorganized, is wrong, said Feicht and specified as example the planned district heating extension of the Rhine energy. Currently, the city is supplied with about 1 billion kWh of heat per year. An increase to 1.4 billion kWh is planned. However, if this heat is supplied to unrenovated, poorly insulated houses, the demand will rise to 1.8 billion kWh. That, in turn, would result in cost increases that would have to be passed on to all customers.
Attempting schedule, enormous costs
"The heat turnaround cannot be had for zero," Feicht summarizes. The tasks are enormous, he says, and the schedule is "super-ambitious," especially since there is currently a high level of investment in almost all of the regional utilities' business areas, from energy supply to public transport. According to Feicht, the current challenges are similar to those faced by East Germany after reunification or by Germany as a whole immediately after the war. Urgently necessary is therefore an extension of the promotion possibilities.
The demand agrees also the VKU managing director Liebing. He gives the estimated cost of the energy transition at 600 billion euros by 2030. Moreover, simplicity is important, he says, and appeals to the states not to complicate the implementation of the law on municipal heat planning. "It is important that we do not lose too much time in the preliminary phase, the planning. That's why we make it a point to keep it simple." The VKU municipal utilities congress will take place on September 26 and 27 in Cologne.
Author: Katia Meyer-Tien
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