Baden-Württemberg heat summit

Scientific monitoring of the work phase

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The state of Baden-Württemberg has set itself the goal of achieving net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2040 at the latest, five years before the German target year of 2045. In order to live up to this pioneering role, the state faces the challenge of fundamentally transforming its heating supply and realizing a greenhouse gas-neutral or climate-neutral building stock. Against this backdrop, the Ministry of the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector in Baden-Württemberg initiated a dialog process with stakeholders at the heating summit on 17.07.2023.

The dialog process

The working phase of the dialogue process is being scientifically and organizationally supported by the ifeu Institute. In addition to ifeu, departments 62 and 63 of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment, the Baden-Württemberg Climate Protection and Energy Agency (KEA-BW) and Umwelttechnik BW GmbH are involved in the support group. 

The aim of the working phase is to identify current challenges of the heat transition together with the stakeholders in Baden-Württemberg, to overcome obstacles and to develop legal, technical, organizational or financial solutions for accelerating the heat transition. The work phase is divided into two parallel working groups that meet on a monthly basis.

In the "Climate-neutral heating networks" working group, measures are being developed to accelerate the expansion and conversion of greenhouse gas-neutral heating supply systems. The "Energy efficiency and use of renewable energies in existing buildings" working group is developing building-related measures to minimize energy consumption and decentralize the use of renewable energies.

Heat summit projects

In addition to the design of the dialog process, lighthouse projects in Baden-Württemberg are presented at a high level of ambition. These "heat summit projects" include a selection of promising individual projects with scaling potential and/or significant GHG savings and are intended to show how the heat transition in Baden-Württemberg can be shaped in detail. 

Evaluation of the heating plans

In a separate work package, ifeu, together with the KEA-BW, is scientifically evaluating the municipal heating plans submitted in Baden-Württemberg in accordance with the Baden-Württemberg Climate Protection and Climate Change Adaptation Act (KlimaG BW).

In addition to a comprehensive evaluation of the publicly accessible report versions with regard to qualitative aspects (including implementation strategies and individual measures, methods and instruments), overarching quantitative issues are also examined as part of the evaluation (in contrast to the individual content review carried out by the regional councils in accordance with Section 27 (4) KlimaG BW). As the municipal energy data recorded in the state database can be used for this purpose (see Section 27(4) of the Climate Act BW and login databases (kea-bw.de)), sector and energy source-specific requirements and potentials can be combined at different spatial aggregation levels, checked for plausibility and analyzed with regard to systemic implications (comparison with state targets, supra-regional energy requirements and any resulting requirements or restrictions).

Data collection is planned to run until April 2024 in order to be able to take into account delayed data sets and derive representative statements at state level. Final results will be available in Q3/2024 and prepared accordingly for the final event of the heating summit scheduled for fall 2024.