Digital Energy

The Heat Planning Act, which came into force on January 1, 2024, is intended to help achieve the climate targets by 2045. It specifies that all municipalities in Germany should have a local heating plan. Together with the IAEW at RWTH Aachen University, Fraunhofer FIT is drawing up local heating plans for municipalities and energy suppliers or network operators. For the energy supplier NEW AG, we have completed important preparatory steps for the municipal heat planning of the communities in their supply area by creating a heat plan.

In order to achieve the climate protection targets, emissions must be reduced, particularly in the heating sector, which currently accounts for around 40% of energy-related emissions in Germany. Municipal heat planning serves as an important instrument for this, which became mandatory for municipalities nationwide by 2026 (2028 for municipalities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants) with the passing of the law "for heat planning and the decarbonization of heating networks". This gives citizens, companies and energy suppliers in Germany certainty as to whether they can count on a central heat supply locally and, if so, which one.

Together with the Institute for High Voltage Equipment and Grids, Digitalization and Energy Economics (IAEW) at RWTH Aachen University, we plan the heating transition for municipalities, municipal utilities, energy supply companies and distribution network operators. For NEW AG, we have prepared the heat planning for a total of 19 municipalities (City of Mönchengladbach and cities and municipalities from the districts of Viersen, Heinsberg Heinsberg and Rhein-Kreis-Neuss) in its supply area.

The first step was to carry out an analysis of the existing heat supply for each of the municipalities. This included determining the heat demand and current heating technology of each building. Subsequently, the heat generation potential based on renewable energies was investigated, both at building level and at central level for heating networks. Finally, target scenarios and transformation paths were determined for the years 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2040 up to 2045 for the future heat supply of the individual municipalities. In order to increase the robustness of the planning, several techno-economic framework conditions and variants were calculated. For this purpose, a self-developed optimization method was used, which determines a minimum-cost energy supply at building level.  The economically optimal refurbishment and heating change decisions of the building owners are simulated for each support year. In particular, this makes it possible to determine the connection rates in heating networks depending on the heat prices that can be represented.

In the scenario with the highest expected probability of occurrence, the results show, among other things, that an almost complete decline in gas grid customers is to be expected by 2045 and an increase in electricity demand from heat pumps of up to 2.5 TWh/a is imminent.