Haar’s mayor has signaled an interest in cooperating with Kirchheim, Aschheim and Feldkirchen or with Vaterstetten on geothermal projects.
In the town hall of Haar, people are putting out feelers to maybe get involved with a geothermal project in the neighborhood after all. Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU) recently got an idea of the technology at AFK-Geothermie GmbH, which is operated as a municipal company by the three municipalities of Aschheim, Kirchheim and Feldkirchen, and found out about the possibilities of possibly also supplying the Haarer area via lines. Bukowski sees slightly better prospects of actually making the largely CO₂-free energy source from the depths usable for hair in a cooperation with Vaterstetten. The project to drill a thousand meters deep, which was abandoned in 2013 partly because of the high costs, is now being approached there. A fundamental decision on this is due next Thursday in Vaterstetten. Households are to be supplied with geothermal energy as early as 2025.
The area around Munich, like the Rhine Graben, is one of the preferred regions in Germany for using the thermal water from the depths to generate electricity and for heating. Many municipalities have been doing this for years. However, like Vaterstetten, Haar once said goodbye to the topic because the investment costs for a cooperation project that had already been planned at the time were considered too high. Now in February 2022, the Ministry of Economics has granted the municipal company in Vaterstetten a “large-scale exploration permit for geothermal energy in the municipal area”. The mayor of Vaterstetten, Leonhard Spitzauer (CSU), is in talks with Zorneding and Grasbrunn about cooperation. Hair has been out of the picture so far. But now Mayor Andreas Bukowksi is bringing Haar on as a possible partner.
A possible large buyer of geothermal energy: the Isar-Amper-Klinik.
(Photo: Sebastian Gabriel)
The party friends Spitzauer and Bukowski get on well with each other. Both took over the mayor’s office in 2020 and are promoting a cross-community stilt cycle path in the middle of the B 304, which could connect the Ebersberg district with Munich. Bukowski now said in the municipal council’s building committee that “talks will take place” with Vaterstetten about geothermal energy, where you can see if you can “get together”. With the Isar-Amper-Klinik and the Jagdfeld residential area, Haar has strong customers for thermal energy. But everything is open. The investment costs are enormous. Bukowski: “It’s not a short-term solution.”
Vaterstetten is looking for partners because the start-up costs for the project, estimated at 25 million euros, cannot be covered alone. There you look at possible funding pots that are still open from the state. Bukowski pointed out in the committee that many millions of euros would of course have to be added to the line construction up to the house connections. There are also some distances to bridge, whether from Feldkirchen or from Vaterstetten.
In Vaterstetten, a geological survey has already shown that thermal water is available in sufficient quantities at depth. According to the community, oil drilling decades ago also proved this. The temperatures may even be over 100 degrees, said Georg Kast, commercial director of the local municipal company. Since May, the “Erdwerk” office has been investigating whether the project is financially feasible. In one sentence: “The profitability analysis showed positive results for all eventualities.”