Esbjerg on the west coast of Denmark has had a large-scale heat pump built – the largest CO2-based seawater heat pump in the world. © Imagebroker/Imago
Germany is facing a daunting task: the heat transition. But progress is slow, criticises a German energy company. Other countries are much further ahead.
Esbjerg – The heat transition is now also to come to Germany. With new laws, the traffic light coalition wants to create the basis for this – and rely primarily on heat pumps. Although this has led to a veritable boom in heat pumps, there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of expansion. Other countries, on the other hand, are already further along.
Denmark: Large-scale heat pump to supply 100,000 people
This includes, for example, our neighbour Denmark. There, more than 40 percent of the heat is already green, reports Der Spiegel. And in five years' time, no heating systems will run on natural gas at all. One reason why Denmark is much further ahead in the heat transition is that the country initiated the heat transition years earlier and is relying on a different concept. For example, two-thirds of Danish households are connected to a district heating network. And they are focusing on large-scale green projects – such as in Esbjerg.
The city on the west coast of Denmark has had a large-scale heat pump built – the largest CO2-based seawater heat pump in the world. This is expected to supply 100,000 people in the region with heat from October. The coal-fired power plant, which has so far taken over this task, will then be shut down. This means that, thanks to the large-scale heat pump, thousands of households can be converted to renewable heat at once – without a single heating system replacement.
"If gas, oil and coal are replaced by a central heat producer, it's cheaper and faster," Kenneth Jørgensen, project manager of the heat pump in Esbjerg, told Der Spiegel. In the best-case scenario, consumers would only notice the change by the fact that prices are falling.
Energy companies: "The German heating market is a sleeping giant"
The manufacturer of the large-scale heat pump for Esbjerg comes from Augsburg in Germany: MAN Energy Solutions (MAN ES). But why aren't there such projects in this country as well? "In practice, the progress of the heat transition in Germany is unfortunately still slow," Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN ES, told the Berliner Zeitung. Although large-scale heat pumps are the ideal technology for an efficient and environmentally friendly heat transition, they have so far only been theoretically available in this country. "The German heating market is a sleeping giant, and the heat transition has so far made only slow progress," criticizes Lauber.
The joint project between BASF and MAN ES for a large-scale heat pump in Ludwigshafen was scrapped by BASF. So far, the company has been pursuing concrete projects in Denmark, the USA and New Zealand, but not in Germany, Lauber told the Berliner Zeitung. At least there are talks with German municipal utilities and district heating suppliers.
