KOMpare

The heating transition is a central component of the energy transition and one of the biggest challenges on the path to climate neutrality. In order to make it a success, the legislator has set the legal guidelines with the Heat Planning Act (WPG) and the Building Energy Act (GEG). According to the WPG, all German municipalities are obliged to submit a plan for a climate-neutral heat supply by 2026 (for larger cities) or 2028 (for smaller municipalities). These plans should define how decentralized and centrally supplied areas are distributed, which technologies are used, what role heating networks play and from which energy sources they are to be supplied.

The implementation of the heating transition presents individual challenges due to regional differences. For this reason, heat planning is currently carried out at a decentralized, municipal level in accordance with political requirements. Due to the decentralized implementation in the individual municipalities, there will initially be no overarching view of the heating plans and their interrelationships. Based on this, the central question arises as to whether the large number of decentralized municipal objectives are sufficient in their entirety to achieve the national climate pathways. This is where the KOMpare research project comes in: The project partners will systematically analyze the incoming heat plans and prepare the results transparently and publicly. On this basis, the municipal plans will be scaled to the national level and compared with the national transformation pathways for the energy system.

Another key issue is the as yet unresolved interaction between municipal heating plans and upstream energy infrastructures, as well as the effect on the energy system as a whole. The KOMpare research project analyzes the interdependencies between the planned heat supply strategies and the higher-level energy systems. The aim is to create a deeper understanding of these relationships and to incorporate the results into the national strategy.

Project goals:

The overarching goal of the project is to transparently present and holistically analyze the effects of municipal heating planning. This includes the following focal points:

1. the systematic evaluation of published municipal heat plans and transparent presentation of the results. The local plans are to be aggregated at national level and compared with national transformation paths.
2. analyzing the interactions between the municipal heating plans and the upstream infrastructures (natural gas, hydrogen, electricity) and energy systems.Im Ergebnis werden Handlungsempfehlungen für Politik, Unternehmen und Forschung abgeleitet.

Key questions

Based on the project objectives, the following key questions arise for KOMpare:

1. how can municipal heating plans be systematically and automatically evaluated and compared?
2. how can the plans and evaluations be visualized transparently and continuously for the various actors (municipalities, municipal utilities, planners) via a platform in order to provide all stakeholders with information on the current status of local and national developments as well as efficient conclusions on the quality and content of their own municipal heating planning?
3. do the current municipal heating plans provide the basis for implementing the cross-sectoral transformation and achieving the climate targets? Or are there gaps or interactions with other sectors that have a detrimental effect on target achievement?
4. what repercussions do existing municipal heating plans have on upstream infrastructures and energy systems, especially the electricity system? In what way does planning at local level deviate from system-integrated and optimized target images at national level, e.g. with regard to infrastructure requirements in the electricity sector or existing individual strategies?

The role of EWI in KOMpare

• Systematic evaluation of municipal heating plans and scaling to the national level
• Model-based analyses of the interactions between the incoming municipal heating plans and upstream infrastructures and energy systems
• Further development of EWI’s own models for the model analysis outlined above
• Contributing to the formulation of recommendations for policy and research based on the project results