New third-party funded project: Monitoring municipal heat planning in Germany

Germany's path to climate neutrality requires a fundamental transformation of the energy system, particularly in the heating sector, which has hardly been able to reduce emissions to date. The decisions of private and public stakeholders in favor of specific technologies are caught between the political obligation to avoid emissions, uncertainty regarding technology and price developments and the risk of long-term lock-in effects. In addition, the decisions made, e.g. in the context of municipal heating planning, have implications for local and supra-regional infrastructure development, the consequences of which for the German energy system have so far been little examined.

The new research project MonKWP, in which the Chair of Energy Economics is involved, is addressing this issue and developing tools for systemic monitoring of the heating transition. Together with the Institute for Energy Economics and the Rational Use of Energy (IER) at the University of Stuttgart and the DVGW Research Unit at the Engler-Bunte Institute (DVGW-EBI) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the complex interactions between heat, electricity, gas and hydrogen networks at municipal and national level are being analyzed using coupled energy system modelling and sectoral infrastructure models. The aim is to develop a bottom-up approach that coordinates the specifications of the municipal heating plans (KWP) with the system development and expansion of the transport networks. The results are to be made available as open data to help decision-makers design coherent and cost-effective transformation paths and avoid costly misinvestments.

The joint project is funded as part of the 8th Energy Research Program (EFP) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).