Garching is the municipality with by far the highest electricity consumption in the Munich district. According to the greenhouse gas report of the district administration, the university town required 288,325 megawatt hours of electricity in the most recent survey in 2018; the various research facilities on the TU campus contribute the lion’s share to this. In view of this, the city now wants to become more involved in climate protection.
Together with the energy agency Ebersberg-Munich, the existing climate protection concept from 2008 is currently being revised, explained Mayor Dietmar Gruchmann (SPD) recently in the building committee. The new concept is to be launched with projects that are as specific as possible by the beginning of 2022. In addition, according to the mayor, the city wants to create a position for a climate protection manager in its next employment plan – a demand that the group of the Greens had long made.
A very specific contribution to climate protection could be the construction of a solar park west of the A 9 motorway. The newly founded citizens’ cooperative “Bürgerenergie Garching” (BEG) intends to set up solar modules there and use the energy generated in this way as electricity in Garching. However, it is still a matter of dispute how much space the city would like to make available to the BEG for this purpose. Some of the plots in question along the motorway to the Garching-Nord exit are already included in the zoning plan for photovoltaics. Directly adjacent, between the motorway and the street Am See, the city has additional areas that have so far been used for agriculture or as grassland. Bürgerenergie Garching would like to expand its solar park to these areas. The city administration, on the other hand, prefers to reserve these areas itself; In the future, there will be space there for the building yard and the recycling yard, whose current location behind the Römerhof means that many residents are not happy.
Of course, it is questionable when a relocation of the building yard and recycling center including new buildings is realistic. Garching still has some major construction projects ahead of it, including the expansion of the West Primary School, the fire station and the East Primary School. With the exception of the mayor, the members of the building committee therefore pleaded for the citizens’ cooperative to have at least the development area for temporary use. The city council will make the final decision on October 28th.