Limburg (Lahn) The man steering an orange forklift past pallets and industrial robots is lucky that his boss doesn’t see him. Because the vehicles otherwise glide autonomously through the Blechwarenfabrik Limburg, which Annika Roth runs with her brother Hugo Trappmann. “That prevents accidents,” says the 31-year-old, “and unnecessary detours.”
The 151-year-old family business, whose name sounds more like rusty factory production, is in fact what Roth describes as “a huge machine with a building envelope”.
“Our material flow is 100 percent automated. Just like the energy management of the building,” says Roth, who holds a degree in business administration and has been on the management board since 2020.
The LED lights switch on and off depending on the time of day or via a motion sensor. If a lot of green electricity flows from the solar system on the roof, the plant increases production. That saves costs. When the machines go silent in the evening, it automatically gets dark.
Roth runs Blechwarenfabrik Limburg together with her brother.
For the new factory building in 2016, the family did without light switches, heating or air conditioning. The waste heat from the paint oven, which is distributed by aluminum pipes, ensures a constant temperature of 20 degrees. In summer, a heat exchange system converts the heat into cold.
The family business in Limburg shows what could be possible in terms of energy efficiency – actually. Because the reality in Germany looks different.
“Energy efficiency has been neglected for decades,” says Christian Noll, Executive Director of the German Energy Efficiency Initiative (Deneff). According to Noll, savings in companies could offset “a multiple” of the controversial three nuclear power plants that are currently on the grid beyond the legally stipulated phase-out date. For example, through more efficient drives, lighting, ventilation or compressed air systems.
Final energy consumption is similar to 1990
But the political debate revolves around how new energy sources will offset Russian gas imports. And not about how energy can be saved. “Of course we urgently need more renewables. But if you only look at the energy production, you won’t change anything in terms of consumption. “Many people accept it as God-given,” Noll complains.
Matthias Weyland from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) knows how much energy Germany wastes. According to this, final energy consumption has stagnated “essentially since 1990” and is “far from all target paths”. Final energy consumption is the amount of energy that actually reaches the consumer.
In 1990 that was around 2600 terawatt hours (TWh), in 2021 it will still be around 2400 TWh. “In more than 30 years not even ten percent have been saved, that’s an indictment,” says Weyland. When it comes to primary energy consumption, i.e. the amounts of coal, wind power or natural gas used to generate energy, things are only slightly better. Here, consumption has fallen by around 18 percent compared to 1990, but in 2021 it rose again by three percent to around 3400 TWh compared to the previous year.
This means that both industry and consumers are a long way from the federal government’s savings paths: by 2030, final energy consumption in Germany should fall by 24 percent compared to 2008 to 1942 TWh. This is what it says in the draft of the Energy Efficiency Act (EnEfG) from January, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
The difference to the target path in 2021 was around 224 TWh. That is almost as much as Hungary’s entire energy consumption.
According to the draft, the primary energy requirement should drop by 57 percent by 2045 compared to 2008 to 1600 TWh. Even if one takes the less ambitious target of around 2800 TWh by 2030 from the energy efficiency strategy of the last legislature as a basis, the additional consumption in 2021 would amount to 161 TWh. That is about half of Germany’s primary energy consumption from lignite-fired power generation.
No wonder. Because, according to Weyland, efficiency measures would be “completely inadequate, if at all”. For example in buildings. According to calculations by Deneff, over the past ten years “unnecessary energy costs of at least 50 billion euros have arisen simply due to inefficiently operated building technology” and around ten million tons of CO2 per year. Up to 15 percent of energy can be saved in building operation “with simple technical measures” such as correctly adjusted heating systems.
Annika Roth stops in front of a digital control screen. The sensors sound an alarm as soon as the energy consumption of a production line is higher than usual. In this way, technicians can rectify defects immediately. Malfunctions in the old plant sometimes went undetected for weeks. Because a lot of consumption costs a lot of money, Roth walked through the hall on Mondays with an Excel list and checked the machines individually.
With the “consistent digitization” of production as well as energy and material efficiency, the company today saves 2,600 tons of CO2 and almost six gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity and gas per year compared to the old location. For comparison: A large wind turbine produces about one GWh of electricity per month.
This leaves the company with half a million euros more every year. The move initiated by father Hugo Trappmann was unavoidable, Roth recalls. The old, crooked and multi-storey factory building in the center of Limburg could no longer have been energetically renovated. “If we had stayed the same, we probably wouldn’t have survived the energy crisis.”
Consumption must also drop in the rest of the country, otherwise Germany will break its climate targets. But energy wastage runs through all sectors.
The building stock is considered a major efficiency problem child, responsible for around 20 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions in Germany every year. Just like the transport sector. What engines could save, heavier cars with a lot of material consumption have eaten up again. “Efficiency is a cross-cutting issue,” emphasizes expert Weyland. But if everyone is responsible, no one is.
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In order for this to change, binding regulations and targets are urgently needed. The Energy Efficiency Act could bring about a reversal of the postulates of various federal governments towards real savings.
The day after Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) put his foot down in the dispute over longer nuclear power plant operating times in mid-October, the Ministry of Economic Affairs presented a draft bill. According to the draft, the law “creates for the first time a cross-sectoral legal framework for increasing energy efficiency”. After five months, the paper should finally come into the cabinet in mid-March.
So far, efficiency policy has mainly been limited to pumping money into subsidies for insulated new buildings, for example. Or relying on the voluntary commitment of companies, building operators or private individuals, Weyland complains. But many billions were also able to increase the refurbishment rate “not compatible with the target”, which is stagnating at just over one percent.
Also because of false incentives such as the “investor-user dilemma”: why should landlords install more efficient heating systems when tenants bear the heating costs? Weyland welcomes all the more if from 2024 new gas and oil heating systems without a renewable share will be banned. This not only reduces CO2. Heat pumps also require significantly less energy.
Deneff also calls for funding measures for buildings to be linked more closely to specific measurements. Lamia Messari-Becker, civil engineer from the University of Siegen, says that “insulation alone doesn’t help” without monitoring energy consumption. “If the heaters remain incorrectly adjusted, nothing is gained.”
For years, the energy requirement has stagnated at an average of 130 kilowatt hours per square meter of heated living space and year. And that despite investments of 340 billion euros in energy-related refurbishments, according to Messari-Becker. “There’s obviously something wrong.”
The Elysée Palace draws heat from the sewers
In any case, the best energy is the one you don’t have to generate anew. The company Uhrig from the Swabian town of Geislingen has turned this credo into a business and sends its employees into the sewage system. Because “even in winter, the waste water there has a temperature of 12 to 20 degrees,” says Stephan von Bothmer, Energy Manager at the canal builder.
Uhrig’s heat exchangers installed in channels use the shower, bath or dishwater flowing into them to heat a separate water circuit. This water returns to the neighborhood via pipes, where a heat pump uses it to heat. “It’s highly efficient and a fantastic home heat source,” says von Bothmer. “Similar to geothermal energy, only without expensive drilling.”
Uhrig has already installed 120 systems in Europe. You can heat and cool. For example, the Zalando headquarters in Berlin or parts of the Elysée Palace in Paris. Studies confirm the potential of wastewater as an energy source. The Heidelberg Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (ifeu) certifies a potential “for space heating and process water” of up to five percent of the total useful heat requirement in the German building stock.
This would save around 4.4 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. For London, the sewer network operator there estimates the annual wastewater energy potential at ten TWh – this corresponds to Germany’s geothermal energy target by 2030.
Annika Roth leaves the factory. She says, “We haven’t invested in efficiency because we’re world saviors. But because it would be economically negligent not to do that.”
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