Source: Energy & Management Powernews, January 19, 2022
The Stadtwerke München has a lot planned for 2022: the municipal utility is ending both nuclear and coal-fired power generation and is divesting its Norwegian oil and gas production business.
"This is a success story 'made in Munich'," said Munich's mayor Dieter Reiter on January 18 at a virtual press conference at which the municipal utility announced the next steps towards climate neutrality. In 2009, the city and its municipal utility, Stadtwerke München, had jointly decided to herald the end of conventional power generation. The Munich residents now want to achieve this goal by 2025.
In recent years, a lot of renewable generation has been built up to achieve this. Further "milestones," as Reiter put it, will follow in the coming months: The Isar 2 nuclear power plant will be taken off the grid by the end of the year, the coal-fired unit in the north of Munich is to be converted to natural gas, and the municipal utility is divesting its Norwegian gas and oil fields.
With its renewable projects "in Munich and the region, in Germany and in Europe, they have already almost achieved the set goal of generating as much green electricity in their own plants as Munich consumes from 2025 onwards," said Mayor Reiter. SWM has been able to increase the share of electricity generated from renewable energies from 5% in 2009 to 90% in the meantime.
"With the renewable energies expansion offensive, SWM has increased its green electricity production from around 350 million kilowatt hours to 6.3 billion kilowatt hours per year in the meantime," said Florian Bieberbach, CEO of SWMt. "This means that as of 2022, we will cover 90 percent of the city's total electricity consumption, i.e. from households, commerce, industry, the public sector as well as subway, streetcar and e-bus operations. We are proud of what we have achieved."
SWM now operates around 60 renewable plants in and around Munich, including hydropower plants, photovoltaic plants, wind and geothermal power plants, and a biomass cogeneration plant. In addition, there are onshore and offshore wind farms, solar parks and a solar thermal power plant in Germany and Europe. Bieberbach expressed confidence in achieving the goal of 100% green electricity for the whole of Munich in 2025. The utility expects green power demand to reach around 7 billion kWh in 2025.
In addition, Bieberbach said forecasts assume that power demand will increase in the years after that, mainly due to e-mobility and the increased use of heat pumps. "We also want to cover the increase in electricity demand with green power and will therefore continue to push ahead with the expansion offensive," said the SWM chairman. The utility estimates the rising electricity demand for Munich in 2035 at up to 8.4 billion kWh and in 2050 it could then be up to 9.7 billion kWh.
Natural gas bridges coal phase-out at HKW Nord
An important component of SWM's climate strategy is the phase-out of coal use at HKW Nord (Block 2). The challenge: According to the German Federal Network Agency, Unit 2 is system-relevant in terms of electricity and therefore may not be shut down without replacement. In addition, the operation of the HKW Nord is indispensable for the reliable supply of district heating in Munich, according to the municipal utilities. Therefore, SWM will convert the coal-fired unit to natural gas this summer.
"For this purpose, we have been conducting tests for quite some time, which take the changed mode of operation into account. The initial results of this test make us confident," explained Helge-Uve Braun, technical director of SWM. "We therefore assume that we will be able to switch the coal block to natural gas as early as the 2022/23 heating season and thus finally say goodbye to coal use in Munich." The Munich utility sees the use of natural gas as a necessary bridging technology.
In addition, the Isar 2 nuclear power plant, in which SWM has a 25% stake, will go offline in 2022. Isar 2 will be the last nuclear reactor nationwide to be decommissioned on December 31. The dismantling of the plant is scheduled to begin in 2023 and is expected to end in 2039. The costs for this are covered by SWM's provisions, he said.
The gas production subcompany Spirit Energy, in which SWM and Bayerngas jointly hold 31%, is also being realigned. It had initiated the sale of its Norwegian gas and oil fields and a UK field. As a result, Spirit Energy is reducing its oil production by around 95%.
OB Reiter also emphasized, "In order to continue to successfully implement our goals, climate protection targets must also be tightened at the Bavarian level. In Bavaria, the course must now be set for the construction of significantly more and also new wind turbines and solar plants." Reiter therefore called on the state government to abandon its blockade attitude, for example, on the subject of the H10 regulation.
Author: Heidi Roider