The cooperation between the Hamburg-based cleantech startup Novocarbo and Stadtwerke Grevesmühlen to decarbonize the district heating network was honored with this year’s “ZfK-Nachhaltigkeitsaward” in the category “Energy”. The prestigious award recognizes outstanding efforts for climate, environmental and resource protection.
Berlin/Hamburg. For the fourth time, the German newspaper “Zeitung für kommunale Wirtschaft (ZfK)” has honored municipal showcase projects with the ZfK Sustainability Award 2023. The winners were announced at the ZfK Sustainability Conference on May 11, 2023 in Berlin. This year, the silver award in the category “Energy” goes to Novocarbo and Stadtwerke Grevesmühlen. The award acknowledged the joint project for sustainable heat supply in the town of Grevesmühlen (Germany).
Novocarbo builds and operates so-called Carbon Removal Parks, which remove CO2 from the atmosphere and at the same time produce climate-neutral heat. The Carbon Removal Park Baltic Sea, the latest site of the cleantech company, is located in the green industrial park Nordwest in Grevesmühlen. Modern pyrolysis technology is used there to process plant residues into biochar. The carbon present in the biomass is bound and permanently stored in the biochar. The pyrolysis process produces climate-neutral waste heat that Stadtwerke Grevesmühlen will feed into its district heating network from the 2023 heating season. This will make the supply of around 1,800 connected households greener and increase the share of renewable energies from 60% to 75%.
The newspaper ZfK praised the cooperation as a “blueprint for the decarbonization of municipal energy suppliers and an important driver for the heat transition in Germany.” With the award, ZfK, Germany’s leading publication for the municipal economy, highlights exemplary showcase projects that are transferable to other municipalities and, in particular, motivate other municipal companies to follow suit. Novocarbo’s decarbonization solution was able to prevail among almost 100 applications received.
Jens Wilms, Project Development at Stadtwerke Grevesmühlen: “We are delighted about the award from ZfK, as the expansion of sustainable heat supply is a top priority for us. By using the waste heat from Novocarbo, we can switch off a natural gas CHP unit, thus saving natural gas as an energy source and making district heating greener. We see great potential here for smaller and medium-sized municipal utilities, because this concept can be easily copied and scaled. The energy supplier only builds the heat transport pipeline and saves on additional investment costs. With cooperative ventures like the one with Novocarbo, the path to climate-neutral energy supply can succeed in an uncomplicated way.”
Caspar von Ziegner, CEO Novocarbo: “Our Carbon Removal Parks can generate climate-neutral heat and at the same time remove CO2 from the atmosphere, making an important contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. We are pleased to be able to drive the heat transition in Germany with collaborations such as with Stadtwerke Grevesmühlen and to support the energy industry in decarbonizing its heat generation.”