Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The consumer goods group Henkel wants to feed industrial waste heat from its own power plant into the district heating network of Stadtwerke Düsseldorf. Henkel and Stadtwerke sealed a corresponding contract on Tuesday. In the future, up to 40 percent of the district heating for two districts in Düsseldorf will be covered by heat from the combined heat and power generation of the Henkel power plant. According to the Federal Network Agency’s power plant list, the power plant has a gross output of almost 83 megawatts and is operated with natural gas and heating oil.
In return, the Stadtwerke can significantly reduce the consumption of natural gas in their gas-fired power plant. “The CO2 emissions of the city of Düsseldorf are reduced by around 6,500 tons per year,” said Henkel. Line construction is expected to begin in November 2022, and the waste heat should be fed in by the end of 2024 at the latest. Nothing was announced about the financial volume of the agreement. The “Westdeutsche Zeitung” had previously reported on it.
According to the Association of Industrial Energy and Power Industries (VIK), many companies would like to feed their waste heat into supply networks and use it. “However, depending on regional conditions, this is only possible in very different ways,” said a spokesman at the request of the German press agency dpa.
A similar project is planned in Hamburg. From the 2024/25 heating period, the Aurubis copper smelter wants to supply around 20,000 households with CO2-free industrial heat from a secondary process in copper production.
