05.2020 - 12.2021

Climate-neutral Heat Supply in Munich 2035

In order to mitigate climate change, targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions have been set in recent years at both the international and national levels. The city of Munich sees itself as a pioneer in this respect and has previously set itself the goal of reducing the city’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions to 0.3 tons of COper inhabitant per year by 2050. Now the state capital has set a new goal and wants to become climate neutral by 2035. On 18 December 2019, the city council’s plenary assembly decided to achieve balance sheet climate neutrality for the entire city of Munich by 2035. In this context, in November 2019, the City Council commissioned a study to investigate how Munich’s heating supply can be converted to renewable energies by 2035 at the latest and thus become climate-neutral.

After major efforts have already been made in recent years to develop concepts for a climate-neutral supply of electricity to the city, special attention is now being paid to the heat supply. Previous studies have shown that achieving a climate-neutral heat supply is particularly challenging. In order to master these challenges, the study “Climate-neutral heat supply in Munich” aims to determine which technology solutions can be used to convert the heat supply in Munich to renewable energies as quickly as possible in order to make it wholly climate-neutral, and what achieving this will cost. The project is conducted in cooperation with the Öko-Institut.

An overview of the project steps under consideration is shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Presentation of the work packages in the project "Climate-neutral heat supply in Munich 2035

First of all, the current structure and the expected development of the Munich residential building stock will be examined with regard to the buildings’ physical condition, the heat supply technology, and the heat consumption. Then the potentials of the individal measures on both the generation and infrastructure side, which could combine to form the overall solution, are determined and their respective CO2 reduction costs are derived.

Based on these basic data, scenarios are developed with which climate neutrality can be achieved in the period up to 2035 and what costs can be expected for this. It is taken into account that the overall goal of a most cost-effective conversion of heat should also be achieved by minimizing potentially stranded investments. Stranded investments could, for example, result from measures that promise quick success but do not fit into the overall concept of supply in the long term.

The transformation into a climate-neutral heat supply of both district heating, including the further development of deep geothermal energy, and the decentralized generation structure are being considered.

In order to involve all relevant stakeholders in the process and thus to support the implementation of the resulting recommendations for action as early as possible, close cooperation with the client, Stadtwerke München (Munich Municipal Utilities), and the City of Munich is part of the study.