Decarbonizing Municipal Heating: Scenario-Based Heat Planning for Oberschleißheim, Germany

Abstract

This thesis derives a procedure for heat planning with focus on heat sources through a literature review of existing guidelines and case studies from Germany, Denmark and Italy. In a second step this procedure is adopted for assessing potential scenarios for the future heat supply of the municipality of Oberschleißheim (OSH), Germany, both for a district heating (DH) grid and individual heating solutions. Costs and emissions for different low-carbon heat sources are defined from literature and an optimization of different scenarios is carried out using a Matlab code. The purpose of the code is to find the optimum composition of heat sources, including installed capacities and hourly provision, while respecting emission limitations and minimizing the levelized costs of heat (LCOH) of the system.
The analysis showed that a massive expansion of the existing DH grid to provide around 62% of the total demand and a switch of heat supply to the grid from natural gas (NG) to a large-scale groune-sourced heat pump (HP) accompanied by a solar thermal plants, a seasonal pit storage and peak boilers running on domestic wood chips and gas from a local wastewater treatment plant (WWT gas) is able to decrease heat provision costs by 36% until 2045 and limit emissions to only 2% of the sectors emissions in 1990. A simultaneous fade-out of oil and NG boilers in individual heat supply and expansion of air- and ground-sourced HPs, pellet boilers and the installation of a HP at the WWT plant ensures a decarbonization of the individual supply to less than 2% of 1990’s emissions while keeping average provision prices nearly constant. Furthermore, the optimization shows that a switch of sources makes DH one of the cheapest forms of heat supply within the densely populated areas of OSH.
Even though the analysis is based on assumptions regarding the price of sources and the current and future yearly and hourly heat demands, both on a building-level and regarding the demand of the whole municipality, the tendencies are clear. The need for developing a detailed heat plan is an opportunity for the municipality to increase the use of domestic heat sources and therefore security of supply, while decreasing costs for customers and the environmental impact of the local heating sector.

Popular Abstract

Complete decarbonization and 40% price reduction – sustainable heating in Oberschleißheim (DE) IS possible!

If you could choose between affordable, local heat sources or burning expensive decayed plankton from billions of years ago for heating your home, what would you do? Ok, maybe the second option sounds cooler. But what if the first option is not only cheaper and decreases the dependency from fuel imports but is also good for the environment? Well, that at least should change things, right? So, my thesis posed the question, if and if yes, how, the demand for heat in my German hometown, Oberschleißheim (OSH), could be met from low-carbon local sources. The short answer is: YES, we “just” need to expand district heating (DH) and switch to heat pumps (HPs) and burning local biomass (BM) instead of imported fossil fuels.
All rationally thinking people have accepted that human action has triggered a dangerous climate change on our planet and most of these people agree that we must act against that. Heating of buildings is responsible for a large share of the emissions leading to climate change. E.g. OSH’s current heating system relies to more than 90% on oil and natural gas. Therefore, this thesis was born out of the need for a heat transition – the switch from carbon-intensive imported fuels to less polluting local sources as an answer to ecologic and political challenges.
The work assesses the current and future heating demand of OSH, quantifies available alternative heat sources and their costs and develops scenarios how different combinations of heat sources can cover the demand. These scenarios are evaluated regarding their costs, emissions and realisability.
DH can provide around 56% of the demand. In the target scenario, S1, heat for DH supply comes from a large ground-sourced HP, a large hot-water storage, two small boilers running on gas from the local wastewater treatment plant (WWT gas) and locally sourced wood chips and a 5 ha solar thermal plant. An even more attractive solution is S2, which uses a deep geothermal plant combined with a large heat storage, a ground-sources HP and small engines for electricity and heat production from biogas and WWT gas. Deep geothermal plants in the vicinity of the municipality exist but data for quantifying the potential in OSH is still lacking, so that this scenario suffers from larger insecurities than the first one.
With S1, customers pay 135,5 €/MWh of heat from 2030 on. This is 36% lower than the costs in 2022 and lower than the ones of most individual solutions. Only biomass-based individual heating is cheaper. But sustainably sourced biomass is a very limited resource. Therefore, the most promising sources for individual heating are heat pumps extracting heat from the surrounding air, ground or a groundwater stream with costs of 150 - 170 €/MWh of heat.
The analysis is a first step in developing the future heating system of the municipality, providing orientation for more detailed assessments.

• author: Brandt, Veronika Johanna
• supervisor: Marcus Thern; Luis Sánchez García
• organization: Department of Energy Sciences
• course: MVKM05 20251
• year: 2025
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Heat planning, Oberschleißheim, heating sector, optimization, scenario development, decarbonization, emission reduction
• report number: ISRN LUTMDN/TMPH-25/5633-SE
• ISSN: 0282-1990
• language: English
• id: 9195928
• date added to LUP: 2025-06-23 12:35:00
• date last changed: 2025-06-23 12:35:00