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Determination of the potential of waste heat in Berlin

In the Berlin Energy and Climate Protection Act, the state of Berlin has set itself the binding goal of becoming climate neutral by 2045 at the latest. Whether this goal is achieved depends largely on the development of the heating sector: In 2020, heating, hot water and cooling accounted for over 40 percent of Berlin's total CO2-emissions. Making extensive use of local renewable heat sources and unavoidable waste heat is a key element in achieving a climate-neutral heat supply in a resource-conserving and cost-efficient manner. The Berlin Energy and Climate Protection Programme (BEK) therefore aims, among other things, to comprehensively exploit waste heat and make it usable. Industrial and commercial waste heat is particularly important for the decarbonization of district heating, which provides about one third of the final energy in Berlin's heating sector. 

While there are already good data bases for some renewable energies, such as solar potential and wastewater heat in Berlin, the potential for industrial and commercial waste heat has yet to be identified. The aim of the project is to determine the current and future potential for waste heat in Berlin and to provide spatial data for integration into a heat register. The potentials are to be collected by means of a survey and supplemented with theoretical calculations. 

The amount of waste heat that will be available in the future depends, among other things, on the efficiency gains that companies can realize and the extent to which other companies settle in Berlin that can be expected to generate unavoidable waste heat. One example is data centers, where unavoidable waste heat is generated by cooling. In addition to a geo-referenced data set and a projection of waste heat quantities, the project team is developing a set of measures with which the state of Berlin can control the availability of unavoidable waste heat in the city and support its development. The project includes two expert workshops with Berlin stakeholders in order to incorporate their experiences and assessments of the existing and future potentials of unavoidable waste heat as well as the instruments. 

IÖW Project Team