Berlin.
Gas heaters should also be approved after 2024 – if they can be operated with climate-friendly gases. What is it about?
The leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP discussed this week in the coalition committee for almost 30 hours – among other things, about the heat transition. In the end it was clear: the law planned by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) to ban new oil and gas heating systems will come – albeit with a compromise.
Coalition committee agrees on heating dispute: what should apply from January 2024
The coalition committee decided to “legislate that from January 1, 2024, every newly installed heating system should be operated with 65 percent renewable energies,” says the result paper. It therefore boils down to hybrid heating systems – such as classic oil heating in combination with a heat pump or solar thermal system. In some cases, there are already subsidies for these solutions. The linked article summarizes what state subsidies are available for new heating systems.
However, at the insistence of the FDP, the addition was added that a “technology-open approach” was being pursued. How exactly such an approach could look like is still unclear. According to FDP leader Christian Lindner, gas heaters should continue to be approved if they are operated with climate-friendly gases. But what exactly is that?
Using gas heating with biogas: How these gases are produced in a climate-friendly way
The most important climate-friendly gases include biogas and hydrogen. However, both currently only account for a very small part of the gas supply. According to the Federal Network Agency, just 2.5 gigawatt hours of biogas – processed as biomethane – were fed into the public grid in 2021. With hydrogen it was only 0.004 gigawatt hours.
Biogas is produced from organic materials such as animal manure, plant waste or leftover food. This biomass is then collected in biogas plants and decomposed with the help of bacteria. This creates a gas that can be captured and used to generate electricity or heat. In order to be able to feed it into the gas infrastructure, however, it still has to be processed into biomethane. Currently, however, only a fifth of the biomass used for the production of biogas comes from waste – the larger part is made up of raw materials grown for gas production, such as grain or corn.
Also read:Coalition Committee – Here the parties contradict each other
Heating with hydrogen: Only a certain type is really completely CO2-neutral
Hydrogen also has to be obtained first because it occurs in nature almost exclusively in combination with other elements. There are various methods for this – which also determine the respective designation of the hydrogen. According to Lindner, however, only two types of hydrogen should also be considered for climate-neutral use: green and blue hydrogen.
Green hydrogen is the most climate-friendly variant. It is made by electrolysis. To do this, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen with the help of electricity from renewable energies. Green hydrogen is therefore CO2-neutral. Blue hydrogen, on the other hand, is obtained by what is known as steam reforming. Water vapor reacts with carbon monoxide, which in turn produces hydrogen and CO2. This requires fossil natural gas. However, most of the carbon dioxide produced is separated and stored in the ground.
There is also gray and turquoise hydrogen. Gray hydrogen is produced in the same way as blue hydrogen, but the resulting CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Turquoise hydrogen, on the other hand, is produced by splitting methane with the help of heat. This produces hydrogen and solid carbon.
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