01/30/2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
The district heating association AGFW demands to finally use waste heat more consistently and has published a position paper. It needs urgently more data as well as a waste heat use requirement.
Concretely the district heating federation AGFW demands in its published position paper for the improvement of the waste heat use among other things the brisk introduction of a waste heat register. "The bill of the energy efficiency law present to us contains many good beginnings, in order to make better usable waste heat in Germany. A better data transparency for the heat suppliers is a central step to more waste heat use", says AGFW expert Johannes Dornberger.
The heat network operators often do not know how much waste heat accumulates locally in companies. "With the introduction of a Germany-wide waste heat register, the heat network operators could obtain continuous access to important data such as temperature levels and the amount of energy produced in companies," Dornberger said in a statement issued by the AGFW on January 27.
Another important demand in the published position paper of the district heating association is also the introduction of a waste heat utilization requirement. This requirement should not apply exclusively to data centers, the paper says, but must include all sources of waste heat. The background to this is the draft of the upcoming Energy Efficiency Act: for data centers that generate a lot of heat for cooling computers, an obligation to feed into district heating networks is planned, said Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) a few days ago in the online forum "Europe Calling" (we reported). In the opinion of the AGFW it is however more meaningful that "the waste heat use for all industrial and commercial plants, which can be established again and/or modernized fundamentally, in the style of the intended regulation for computing centers, obligatory become."
According to the climatic goals of the federation Germany is to be climaticneutral to 2045. The heat supply of trade, industry and private households accounts for more than half of the German final energy demand. Due to the energy crisis in the past year, according to the AGFW, the time pressure to transform towards climate-neutral heat generation has increased further.
With the relief package in March 2022 (federal government measures to deal with high energy costs), the traffic light coalition had formulated the objectives that the decarbonization of district heating as well as the network expansion should be significantly accelerated. According to these targets, the district heating sector, which currently supplies 14 percent of German households with heat, is to be 50 percent climate-neutral by 2030. Currently, the climate-neutral share of district heating is around 30 percent. In order to achieve this target, the AGFW believes that increased use of waste heat is elementary. This applies in particular to heating networks in densely populated, urban areas.
Summary of recommendations from the AGFW position paper on waste heat utilization in Germany
Improving data transparency:
- Creation of a waste heat register based on a proper definition of waste heat
- Obligation of companies to continuously collect waste heat flows
Waste heat utilization requirement:
- Introduction of a requirement to examine and utilize waste heat potentials for industrial & commercial plants, also across company boundaries
- Requirement to examine within the framework of approval processes for new plants and within the framework of municipal heat planning for existing plants
- Consideration of waste heat in management & audit systems
- Expansion of a waste heat utilization requirement to existing plants
Assurance of address risk:
- Introduction of a waste heat fund to cover the financial address risk
Incentives waste heat provision:
- Coupling energy tax exemption to waste heat use/supply
- Standards to recognize decarbonization contributions from externally used waste heat sources in corporate CO2 reporting
Incentive programs:
- Ensure the seamless interaction of the relevant support programs (BEW, EEW, KWKG)
According to figures from the AGFW, a rough estimate of up to 70 billion kWh of technically usable waste heat could be available nationwide. Waste heat is generated not only in industry, but also, for example, in data centers, hospitals, laundries and waste disposal. Sometimes it even has to be removed at great expense to prevent technical systems from overheating. The AGFW has been campaigning for years to make better use of the byproduct heat. To this end, it has already published a guide to waste heat utilization in 2020.
Author: Heidi Roider
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