Gas alternative: biomass heating plants planned – salzburg.ORF.at
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Half of the district heating in the city of Salzburg is to be generated not with gas but with biomass. Salzburg AG will be pursuing this goal in the coming years. For this purpose, two new biomass heating plants will be built. However, the changeover will not happen overnight.
70 percent of the district heating for around 22,000 customers in the city of Salzburg is currently generated by burning natural gas and 30 percent from biomass. A wood chip heating plant in the municipality of Wals-Siezenheim (Flachgau) is currently supplying heat to municipal households.
That should change in the foreseeable future, says Siegfried Müllegger, head of energy technology at Salzburg AG: “In year two, the ratio will be 40 percent to 60 percent due to the commissioning of the biomass heating plant in Siezenheim. This is already being planned and we are already planning a third large biomass heating plant so that we can quickly go from 30 percent renewable energy to 50 percent.”
This is intended to reduce dependency on foreign gas, adds Müllegger. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen in a few years.
Salzburg AG is bunkering gas for the coming winter
With the second biomass heating plant in Siezenheim, enough heat can be generated to cover the base load in the warm half of the year and no more fossil fuels have to be burned at this time of year, according to Salzburg AG. For the heating season next winter, the energy supplier is now bunkering gas – currently 40 percent with Gazprom and 60 percent with other European suppliers.