The Berlin district heating network and nine cogeneration plants in the city have so far been operated by the Swedish state-owned company Vattenfall before they were sold to the state of Berlin at the end of 2023. For far too long, Vattenfall has ignored the upcoming heat transition in Berlin and relied on gas and coal for district heating. The ‘decarbonisation roadmap’ presented by the company in mid-2023 is also a testament to poverty.
For example, the phase-out of fossil fuels in district heating is to be achieved above all by building new wood-fired cogeneration plants and burning the gas-fired power plants with expensive green hydrogen, which is very limited in availability. With the target of a high proportion of wood biomass in the heating network, almost one fifth in 2030, around 1.6 million tonnes of wood would be burned annually in Berlin’s power plants – wood that comes almost entirely directly from forests. These plans would not help the climate, because the burning of forest wood releases at least as much CO2 as the burning of coal, and already weakened forests continue to come under pressure due to the additional demand for raw materials.
A successful heat transition requires real renewable alternatives and not just a change from one climate-damaging combustion technology to the next. After the completion of the takeover process, the Berlin Senate must immediately change its course of action.
More about our work on the heat transition and climate policy as a whole can be found here.
