“Mannheim Model” for a climate-positive future 

MVV Energie, an ener­gy com­pa­ny in Ger­many, is once again step­ping up the pace in its course towards cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty, the com­pa­ny announced at a press con­fer­ence. For exam­ple, the ener­gy com­pa­ny aims to achieve a CO2 reduc­tion of at least 80 per­cent by 2030 com­pared to 2018.

“And we’re going even fur­ther: by 2040, we not only want to become cli­mate-neu­tral — after 2040, our future will even be ‘cli­mate-pos­i­tive’. In oth­er words, we will remove green­house gas­es from the atmos­phere again.”

- Dr. Georg Müller, Chair­man of the Board of Management

To achieve this, in addi­tion to the elec­tric­i­ty turn­around and the asso­ci­at­ed expan­sion of renew­able ener­gies, as well as sup­port­ing its cus­tomers in their decar­boniza­tion, the ener­gy com­pa­ny is focus­ing above all on the heat­ing turn­around. MVV calls this approach the “Mannheim Mod­el”. “The heat­ing turn­around is per­haps the most impor­tant key to achiev­ing cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty from the com­pa­ny,” said Dr. Müller, adding, “MVV will make its own dis­trict heat­ing busi­ness in Mannheim and the region cli­mate neu­tral much faster, name­ly already in the decade now under­way.” The ener­gy com­pa­ny is thus gain­ing fur­ther momen­tum in its cli­mate pro­tec­tion activities. 

One million tonnes of CO2 saved five years ahead of schedule 

In view of the polit­i­cal frame­work in Ger­many and the Euro­pean Union in terms of cli­mate pro­tec­tion, the com­pa­ny once again sees itself as a pio­neer. Cli­mate pro­tec­tion and the ener­gy turn­around are the clear max­ims for action. The com­pa­ny sees the decar­boniza­tion of the econ­o­my and soci­ety as a key task in which the ener­gy indus­try, as one of the major emit­ters, is inten­sive­ly chal­lenged, accord­ing to Dr. Müller: “The expan­sion of renew­able ener­gies, elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty, the heat turn­around, smart cities: all this can only be achieved with ener­gy and only by using cli­mate-friend­ly technologies.” 

This prin­ci­ple was also fol­lowed by the ten-year tar­gets by 2026 that the com­pa­ny had already set itself in 2016 — specif­i­cal­ly, dou­bling the port­fo­lio of its own renew­able gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty by 2026, installing 10. 000 megawatts of gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty based on renew­able ener­gies, the cre­ation of a cli­mate-neu­tral admin­is­tra­tion, and the sav­ing of one mil­lion met­ric tons of net CO2 emis­sions by 2026. “We have already achieved the goal of sav­ing one mil­lion met­ric tons of net CO2 emis­sions this year — five years ahead of the orig­i­nal dead­line,” announced the CEO. 

Heat turnaround at the heart of achieving climate neutrality 

As Ger­many’s third-largest dis­trict heat­ing com­pa­ny, the MVV Group sup­plies dis­trict heat­ing not only to Mannheim and parts of the Rhine/Neckar met­ro­pol­i­tan region, but also to the cities of Kiel and Offen­bach via its sub­sidiaries. Nation­wide, a good third of Ger­many’s CO2 emis­sions cur­rent­ly still come from the areas of hot water and heat­ing in build­ings. The Group is now turn­ing its dis­trict heat­ing green step by step and con­vert­ing its dis­trict heat­ing oper­a­tions in Mannheim and the Rhine/Neckar met­ro­pol­i­tan region entire­ly to green ener­gy sources by 2030 at the latest. 

“We are fac­ing the future task of rein­vent­ing dis­trict heat­ing for the sec­ond time,” explained Dr. Müller. “In doing so, we are rely­ing on the broad­est of all green pow­er and heat port­fo­lios of Ger­man ener­gy com­pa­nies: the use of waste heat from waste treat­ment and bio­mass, sewage sludge recy­cling, the use of renew­able ener­gies such as bio­methane, of riv­er heat pumps, and of new oppor­tu­ni­ties in the field of geot­her­mal ener­gy and indus­tri­al waste heat.” 

Contribution to achieving Paris climate protection agreement 

With its strate­gic ori­en­ta­tion, MVV is clear­ly com­mit­ted to the goals of the Paris Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Agree­ment. To this end, in addi­tion to con­vert­ing its dis­trict heat­ing sup­ply and devel­op­ing cus­tomer-relat­ed solu­tions, the ener­gy com­pa­ny is also con­sis­tent­ly press­ing ahead with the coal phase-out already agreed polit­i­cal­ly. Emis­sions from con­ven­tion­al gen­er­a­tion posi­tions will be suc­ces­sive­ly set to zero. And the com­pa­ny is also keep­ing up the pace of expan­sion for renew­able ener­gy to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty and green heat. Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion based on renew­able ener­gies will be dou­bled again by 2026 — as was already the case between 2010 and 2016. 

“Mannheim Model”: MVV to become climate-positive from 2040 onwards 

“Ger­many wants to be cli­mate-neu­tral by 2045, and we want to be cli­mate-neu­tral by 2040. But our Mannheim Way does­n’t end there. Instead, we are going even fur­ther. We are look­ing beyond 2040 and then even want to become cli­mate pos­i­tive,” explained Dr. Müller. That’s why we will decar­bonize the waste treat­ment plants in the long term through CO2 cap­ture and thus devel­op them into CO2 sinks.