Local towns turn to Lake Constance as energy source for climate-friendly heating
dpa
A growing number of towns on the shores of Lake Constance are planning to use the water’s thermal energy to switch to carbon-neutral heating, reports newswire dpa. “Lake thermal energy offers enormous and so far largely untapped potential for CO2-neutral heating on the shores of Lake Constance,” said Thekla Walker, the Green environment minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg, which borders the lake. “We need creative, regional approaches like this to accelerate the heating transition,” she added.
Lake Constance, which borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is around 60 kilometres long and fed by the River Rhine. Lake thermal energy involves extracting heat energy from the lake's water - even when the water is relatively cold during winter - with a heat-pump and transferring it into a building to heat it. In summer, the process can be reversed to provide cooling.
Several communities around Lake Constance are already at various stages of planning lake thermal energy projects, according to the article. The towns of Konstanz and Meersburg are already at an advanced stage, while Friedrichshafen, Überlingen, and Radolfzell are also exploring the possibilities. Horticultural businesses on the island of Reichenau are also considering heating their greenhouses with heat from the lake. Several communities in Switzerland and Austria are also working on projects.
Baden-Württemberg’s environment ministry said it wants to push the technology, adding that it was currently in the process of finding ways to activate additional capital to finance the high initial investment costs.
In the push towards climate-neutral heating, many municipalities are turning to nearby bodies of water as a potential source of energy. In late 2023, a heat pump in the city of Mannheim that uses water from the Rhine River started to supply around 3500 households.
Notwithstanding these innovative but isolated projects, Germany’s transition to sustainable heating is progressing far too slowly. Four in five residential buildings in Germany are still heated with oil and gas. Around 15 percent of Germany's CO2 emissions come from heating buildings, meaning the vast majority of the country's 40 million homes must switch to climate-neutral heating technology – such as heat pumps – if it is to reach its 2045 net-zero emissions target.
