Background:

The Paris Climate Agreement requires a rapid and efficient shift to renewable energies and a decarbonization of the energy system. Combined heat and power provision from biomass is one way to efficiently provide renewable heat. Despite this, many bioenergy plants in Germany are mainly used to generate electricity and the provision of externally usable heat still has untapped potential. In this study, we investigated gross quantities as well as the economically viable potential of Germany’s current bioenergy plant stock in supplying renewable heat.

Methods:

We used a top-down GIS modeling approach to spatially and explicitly assess the heat demand of three different categories of heat sinks at sub-municipal level. These included residential, commercial, and industrial areas, as well as large individual heat consumers. We then calculated the plant-specific heat sales potential for two different district heating network options. In addition, we developed a method for assessing the economic efficiency of the previously identified technical heat sales volume for a set of 20 different clusters of bioenergy plants.

Results:

The results show that about 50% of the bioenergy plants have potential heat consumers in their immediate proximity. The overall technical heat sales potential for all three categories totals around 150 TWhth/a. However, this potential is not evenly distributed throughout Germany. Certain regions appear to be more favorable for investing in district heating networks powered by heat from biomass. The economically viable heat sales potential related to electrical energy generation ranges from − 0.128 to 0.160 €/kWhth.

Conclusion:

We concluded that, under certain conditions such as location or supply and demand structure, German bioenergy plants have the potential to provide a significant share to renewable energies in the heating sector. In addition, the heat sales potential is highly relevant for plant operators as the importance of heat as a business segment is set to increase. Furthermore, bioenergy plants could contribute 2.1% (16.3 TWhth/a) to the total demand for space heating in Germany (765 TWhth/a) when considering certain technical and economic constraints.