06.2022 - 04.2022

Municipal heat plan for the city of Augsburg – a cooperation of municipality, municipal utility and the FfE

One of the most relevant keys to success in the creation of a municipal heat plan is the cooperation of the two most important local actors: representatives of the municipality and representatives of the city’s energy supply company. This has been recognized in the city of Augsburg and that is why a process of creating a municipal heat plan for Augsburg has been initiated in June 2022. This will be a joint process between the municipal administration of the city of Augsburg (environmental department in coordination with the building department) and the Augsburg municipal utility. The goal is to create a heat plan including concrete implementation proposals for predefined city clusters for the heat transformation in Augsburg by 2023.

Clear definition of the roles of the project participants

To achieve the goal as quickly and efficiently as possible, the roles of the project participants were precisely defined. Both the city and the Augsburg municipal utility are responsible for the content-related work as well as the identification and networking with relevant internal as well as external stakeholders. In this context, the city is to provide data, particularly in the earlier steps of the heat plan development, as well as supplying information on upcoming projects regarding new housing developments, thermal refurbishment activities in the past and municipal buildings, which can be used as a nucleus for supplying a neighbourhood with thermal energy. The municipal utilities, for their part, have information on the current final energy consumption of a large part of the buildings as well as existing and planned heat generation technologies. Furthermore, they have the know-how to compare different heat generation technologies and to model the process of heat transformation.

The role of the FfE

The FfE accompanies the process acting as a moderating neutral authority and provides technical expertise and experience from similar projects in municipal heat planning (e.g. Climate-neutral Heat Supply in Munich 2035). Furthermore, the FfE verifies intermediate as well as final results and compares them to own findings. For this purpose, FfE actively participates in the meetings of the operative core team. Additionally, FfE moderates and provides expert knowledge at public events related to the project. In these events, different opinions and experiences can be gathered, which are crucial for a realistic and thus implementable heat transformation strategy. In addition, FfE supports the preparation of the results into a comprehensible, then publicly available final report.

Procedure

To determine the important milestones in the project, the originally intended procedure was compared with the FfE guideline on heat transformation and can be summarized as follows:

  1. survey of current heat supply: determination of data on building structure, heating structure, existing systems, and potentials of climate-neutral heat sources.
  2. definition of framework parameters, such as energy prices and renovation rates
  3. definition of demand scenarios
  4. definition of supply clusters
  5. prioritization of heat generation alternatives per supply cluster considering data from previous steps
  6. definition of supply scenarios based on prioritization
  7. derivation of measures and recommended actions for heat transformation