Project data

Summary of the project

In order to meet the national climate protection targets, it will no longer be possible to implement new heating systems based on fossil fuels from 2024. This poses major challenges for culturally valuable existing buildings in old town centres, Wilhelminian-style districts and rural areas in Thuringia if heating systems need to be replaced.

This project therefore aims to identify ways to decarbonise the heat supply with a focus on these buildings and neighbourhoods, which are important for Thuringia. To this end, a Thuringian residential building and heating typology will first be drawn up in order to identify solutions for the most climate-neutral heat supply possible for existing buildings on this basis.

Among other things, the building-related heat and electricity supply via currently available technologies such as heat pumps for utilising environmental heat from the air or the ground, solar thermal energy, photovoltaics and the use of biogenic solid fuels including wood gasification are considered.

Furthermore, energy efficiency measures are considered that do justice to the cultural characteristics of the buildings or neighbourhoods under consideration and new approaches to heat supply are also examined. This includes the use of pipeline-bound hydrogen for appropriately adapted gas burners, CHP units or fuel cell systems for combined electricity and heat generation at building level.

Methodologically, both the buildings and the energy supply systems are modelled and simulated with different input parameters. Finally, a Pareto optimisation is used to identify economic and ecological optima for various existing typologies and the results are prepared in the form of building-type-related "climate protection roadmaps" in concrete recommendations and instructions for action for the heating transition in Thuringia. In addition, projections of the achievable climate protection contribution in Thuringia will be made and various implementation scenarios analysed.