Geothermal energy: competition for geothermal energy in the south of Munich – district of Munich

It’s a hot treasure lying dormant beneath the earth’s crust and would be enough to supply the energy needs of all humankind for thousands of years. Theoretically. The practice is different. Neglected by politicians, geothermal energy never really got off the ground in the whole country for a long time and currently covers just half a percent of the entire Bavarian heating requirement. No more than a drop in the ocean.

Now, however, students at the Technical University in Garching have verified the potential of deep geothermal energy in a report on the master plan of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs – and the result makes you sit up and take notice: 40 percent of Bavaria’s entire heat requirement could be generated by geothermal energy alone. In view of this, the operators of geothermal power plants in the district of Munich are calling on the Free State and the Federal Government to take this enormous potential into account by significantly increasing the financial subsidies for this sustainable form of energy.

Bavaria is sitting on a hot-water bottle, said the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) recently and announced that he wanted to expand and accelerate geothermal energy. The fact that the Free State has increased its budget for the promotion of geothermal research by just 2.5 million to ten million euros is a joke, said the budget spokeswoman for the Greens in the state parliament, Claudia Köhler from Unterhaching. And the three billion euros that the federal government intends to make available by 2016 for renewable heat generation from geothermal energy, solar thermal energy and the use of large heat pumps as well as other heating network infrastructure, describes the managing director of the municipal geothermal company Erdwärme Grünwald (EWG), Andreas Lederle, as downright “ridiculous”.

Helmut Mangold, the managing director of the Pullach geothermal company IEP, also takes the report as an opportunity for a political message: “The path to get there costs billions,” says Mangold, and many less solvent municipalities than Grünwald and Pullach could only take this path if if the Free State and its budget law allowed them to take out loans covered by guarantees. Ottobrunn, for example, which according to Mayor Thomas Loderer (CSU) is financially too weak to build power plants and heating networks and is instead supplied via a district heating network owned by Stadtwerke München.

The state capital’s thirst for energy is almost unlimited

For the two wealthy Isar valley communities Pullach and Grünwald, on the other hand, the financing of their geothermal plants has to be managed. In both places there is a real sense of optimism, which is also expressed by new geothermal projects that have not yet been publicly discussed. Grünwald, which has so far invested more than 100 million euros in its pipe network and house connections alone, wants to spend a further 75 million to finance two more drilling duplicates in addition to the Laufzorn I geothermal site. This decision was taken unanimously in the municipal council, reports EWG Managing Director Lederle.

According to Lederle, Laufzorn II will provide around 50 megawatts of thermal output when it is completed, enough to supply 6,000 households. According to the Chairman of the Board of the IEP, Andreas Most, Pullach will also step up its game. In addition to the planned joint venture with Stadtwerke München (SWM), which is now on the brink, and which originally envisaged six boreholes near Baierbrunn, according to Most, IEP will drill two more boreholes separately on its own property. Most expects costs in the tens of millions. According to the managing director, this will soon be discussed in the municipal council, but he does not want to rule out that an agreement could still be reached with the SWM.

Open detailed view

In the considerations of Pullach and Grünwald, but also in other communities in the district of Munich, the huge heat requirement of the state capital plays a major role. The geothermal activities in the district of Munich have always been followed with great interest by the Munich public utility company, as the state capital’s thirst for energy is unlimited and is to be satisfied in part with geothermal heat from the surrounding area. From the point of view of the researchers at the Technical University of Munich, this also makes sense. Interconnected lines could enable area-wide use, according to their report.

The municipal utilities have been putting out feelers into the surrounding area for years, in order to enter into cooperation with the municipalities, if not even to tap the hot water springs on their own. The geothermal power plants in the Brunnthal district of Kirchstockach, in the Aying district of Dürnhaar and in Sauerlach now belong to the public utilities, as do the former district heating networks of the energy supply company Ottobrunn and Bioenergie Taufkirchen. The declared goal of the municipal energy supplier is to let the district heating networks in Munich and the surrounding area grow together. The costs for this are of course horrendous: connecting lines with a diameter of half a meter cost around five million euros per kilometer, the distribution network costs up to two million euros per kilometer.

A joint venture between the city and Pullach is on the brink

SWM expects an enormous heat potential from cooperation with the Pullacher and Grünwalder geothermal companies, which, however, are far from sealed. The planned joint venture with Pullach is now on the brink because the municipality does not like the way the Munich company does business. They were not only striving for a majority in the shareholders’ meeting, but also wanted to see the assumption of risk – we are talking about a risk tranche of up to 60 million euros – regulated mainly at the expense of the IEP, the Pullachers complained. “We don’t need to shift risks onto the community and want to dominate ourselves,” says Mayor Susanna Millennium (Greens). So the community may single-handedly tap a new barrel, albeit a smaller one than intended. The IEP is now planning two more boreholes in the Baierbrunn municipal area, six could be drilled if the public utilities cooperated, which would create the largest geothermal plant in Germany.

The municipal utilities do not want to comment on the ongoing negotiations with the two Isar valley communities at the moment. EWG Managing Director Andreas Lederle is also reluctant: “Grünwald is exploring further opportunities for cooperation,” he says simply. The joint project is called “Project Perlenstring” because the eight springs in the south-east of Munich that have been tapped by SWM and EWG so far are lined up like a string of pearls. In a joint venture, the partners now want to develop further geothermal systems and significantly expand their district heating networks. Managing Director Lederle looks primarily to Unterhaching, where the heat consumers live close together and a lot of trade is located.

The fact that Stadtwerke München is not an easy negotiating partner could also be testified to by a statement by FDP district councilor Manfred Riederle: With its financial power, SWM is the “Goliath in the middle, compared to whom we are all just dwarfs”. If the SWM dictated the conditions, then the municipalities would lose out. The district of Munich should therefore spread a protective cloak around the municipalities.

This is what he is doing now, via the “Wärmewende” working group (Arge) founded in December, with which several municipalities want to represent their interests together in the future. The initiative for this came from the communities of Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn and Hohenbrunn, in particular from Hohenbrunn’s climate protection manager Ilona von Schaubert. The consortium is managed by the Ebersberg-Munich energy agency. In the meantime, Grasbrunn, Putzbrunn, Taufkirchen and Brunnthal have also declared their accession to the consortium. A first meeting is already planned for the beginning of January, and other municipalities may be on board by then.