Conference of Construction Ministers promotes timber construction
Published
Nationwide, construction with wood for buildings up to the high-rise limit is to be made easier and the Model Building Code (MBO) adapted accordingly. This was adopted by the Construction Ministers' Conference (BMK) at the end of the two-day conference in Norderstedt. In addition to climate-friendly construction with a focus on wood, the topic of "affordable housing" was also on the agenda.
Four and a half years after the legal equality of timber construction in the LBO Baden-Württemberg and almost half a year after Bremen, the sixth federal state to break out of the broad phalanx of "timber construction obstructionists", the realisation is now maturing throughout Germany that timber is a particularly environmentally friendly and climate-compatible building material that can be used to solve a wide range of construction tasks well and cost-effectively.
The 52° Nord quarter in Berlin's southeast convinced this year's jury of experts and, with its sustainable and architecturally coherent overall concept, wins the German Housing 2020 Award for the best quarter development.
The Award Deutscher Wohnungsbau is the first award for developers and clients in the area of multi-storey residential construction. The architecture prize is awarded by a jury of experts. This year's jury members include Reiner Nagel, Chairman of the Executive Board Federal Foundation for Building Culture, Sabine Schneider, Editorial Manager of the architecture magazine Baumeister and last year's winner Lars Krückeberg, GRAFT Architekten.
The award-winning 52° North quarter covers around 100,000 m² and is located in the Grünau district of Treptow-Köpenick between the banks of the Dahme River and the Teltow Canal on a former industrial wasteland. A striking feature of this district development is the 6,000 m² water basin, the ecological and visual heart of the district: as part of the overall sustainable concept, rainwater from the surrounding buildings is collected here and biologically purified by planting along the sides. Evaporation returns the rainwater to the natural water cycle and improves the microclimate in the quarter - an example of contemporary rainwater management based on the model of the sponge city.
A neighbourhood square with a café, publicly accessible riverside promenades, play and recreation areas, an energy centre and an eco-nursery round off the concept. Daniel Riedl, member of the Management Board of Vonovia SE and responsible for BUWOG's development in Germany: "In Quartier 52° Nord, we have implemented a quality-first approach, i.e. with the first construction phase we have designed a sustainable residential environment that creates flair and quality of life at the same time - for the new residents and also for the people in the surrounding area. This award confirms to us that architectural and sustainable qualities must be thought of together and are essential success factors in neighbourhood development."
With a large number of different architectural firms designing the individual buildings on the various construction sites, Quartier 52° Nord is today one of the largest inhabited architectural parks of the post-reunification era. The area is being developed in sections, with overall completion expected by 2024. Three construction phases are currently under construction in Quartier 52° Nord: BUWOG THE VIEW, BUWOG REGATTAHOF and the BUWOG LOTSENHÄUSER - realised in timber hybrid construction (KfW-40).
About BUWOG BUWOG can look back on 69 years of experience in the residential real estate sector. In Germany, BUWOG Bauträger GmbH currently concentrates on property development with a focus on Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig and currently has a development pipeline of around 14,500 residential units. BUWOG is a subsidiary of Vonovia SE, Europe's leading housing company headquartered in Bochum (Germany).
Contractor: Joachim Eble Architecture, Rolf Messerschmidt, Tübingen
EGS-Plan engineering company for energy, building and solar technology mbH
IER Institute for Energy Economics and Rational Use of Energy, University of Stuttgart
Results: When analysing the total annual costs, the running costs and revenues in the utilisation phase are taken into account in addition to the capital-related investment costs. The result of this full cost calculation is a relatively homogeneous cost level for all building energy standards examined. Due to the subsidies for the better standards, lower energy costs and the use of subsidies, the cost level remains relatively constant among the building energy standards. Thus, higher building energy standards up to the "KfW 40 Plus Standard" are already economically attractive today.
The influence of building energy standards can be classified as subordinate when considering total consumer spending.
Fast and sustainable construction, extension and renovation with wood
As part of Expo Real 2019, experts from the timber construction industry came together for the kick-off event of the Holzbau München network. Organiser Andreas Lerge, Managing Director of Wood Real Estate, opened the evening and welcomed his guests with the topics of digitalisation and professionalisation in timber construction. Larger timber construction projects are currently still underrepresented in German cities, but the general demand for living space in Munich will increase by around 250,000 flats by 2025. Reason enough to make urban timber construction the standard through serial construction and industrial prefabrication. The advantages are obvious: systemised construction reduces construction costs, only a few skilled workers are needed on site to assemble prefabricated modules, construction time and noise and traffic pollution are reduced.
Wood is so stable that it can be used to build high-rise buildings and at the same time unrivalled in its lightness that it can be used to add storeys to existing buildings. Another contribution to active climate protection is refurbishment and modernisation with wood, a renewable resource that is more than sufficient. In total, 18 million tonnes of CO2 can be bound in Bavaria alone. Alexander Gumpp, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of proHolz Bayern, believes it is imperative that a life cycle assessment and compliance with emissions limits are a mandatory component of construction projects. An ecological model housing estate is currently being built in Munich: the Prince Eugene Park. An exemplary urban timber construction that creates plenty of living space for many generations. We are committed to a sustainable forestry and timber industry in Bavaria in order to realise more timber construction projects so that we can call Munich a "timber construction city" by 2030.
Net public electricity generation reached a record share of 59.7 per cent in 2023. The share of the load was 57.1 per cent. This is the result of an analysis presented today by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. New records were set for wind and solar power in 2023. In contrast, generation from lignite (-27 per cent) and hard coal (-35 per cent) fell sharply. Photovoltaics stood out in the expansion of generation capacity: at around 14 gigawatts, the expansion was in double digits for the first time and significantly exceeded the German government's statutory climate protection target. Source of the data is the platform energy-charts.info
Photovoltaic systems generated approx. 59.9 TWh in 2023, of which 53.5 TWh was fed into the public grid and 6.4 TWh was used for self-consumption. At around 9 TWh, June 2023 was the month with the highest solar power generation ever. The maximum solar output of 40.1 GW was reached on 7 July at 13:15, which corresponded to a 68% share of electricity generation. In 2023, the expansion of photovoltaics significantly exceeded the German government's targets: instead of the planned 9 gigawatts, 13.2 gigawatts were installed by November; according to preliminary data, this will be more than 14 gigawatts by the end of 2023. This is a sharp increase compared to 2022 (7.44 GW). This means that PV expansion in Germany has reached double digits for the first time.
The Hydropower increased from 17.5 TWh in 2022 to 20.5 TWh. The installed capacity of 4.94 GW has hardly changed compared to previous years.
The Biomass at 42.3 TWh was at the level of 2022 (42.2 TWh). The installed capacity is 9 GW.
In total, the renewable energies approx. 260 TWh in 2023, around 7.2 per cent more than in the previous year (242 TWh). The share of renewable energy generated in Germany in the load, i.e. the electricity mix that actually comes out of the socket, was 57.1 per cent compared to 50.2 per cent in 2022. In addition to net public electricity generation, total net electricity generation also includes in-house generation by industry and commerce, which is mainly generated using gas. The share of renewable energies in total net electricity generation, including the power plants of "businesses in the manufacturing, mining and quarrying sectors", is around 54.9 per cent (2022: 48.2 per cent).
The Load in the electricity grid totalled 457 TWh, around 26 TWh less than in 2022. Due to the high electricity prices and higher temperatures, electricity was probably saved significantly. The increase in self-consumption of solar power is also reducing the load. The load includes the electricity consumption and grid losses, but not the pumped-storage power consumption and the self-consumption of conventional power plants.
Sharp decline in coal-fired power
After German coal-fired power plants ramped up their production in 2022 - due to the outage of French nuclear power plants, but also due to the distortions in the electricity market caused by the war in Ukraine - their share fell significantly in 2023. As a result, generation in November 2023 was 27 per cent below the same month in the previous year due to the drop in coal-fired electricity exports, but also because of the good wind conditions.
Overall, production from Lignite for public electricity consumption fell by around 27 per cent, from 105.9 to 77.5 TWh. This is in addition to 3.7 TWh for industrial own consumption. Gross electricity generation fell to the level of 1963.
Net production from Hard coal-fired power plants for public electricity consumption was 36.1 TWh (-35 per cent) and 0.7 TWh for industrial own consumption. It was 21.4 TWh lower than in 2022. Gross electricity generation fell to the level of 1955. Natural gas for electricity generation remained slightly below the previous year's level at 45.8 TWh for public electricity supply and 29.6 for industrial own consumption. Due to the shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants in Emsland, Neckarwestheim and Isar on 15 April 2023, the Nuclear power only contributed 6.72 TWh to electricity generation, which corresponds to a share of 1.5 per cent.
Battery storage systems are developing rapidly
The expansion of fluctuating renewable energies also increases the need for grid expansion and storage capacity. Battery storage systems, which are installed on a decentralised basis to buffer the generation of wind and solar power, are particularly suitable. The private household segment is showing strong growth, as is the case with photovoltaic systems. Overall, installed battery capacity almost doubled from 4.4 GW in 2022 to 7.6 GW in 2023, while storage capacity rose from 6.5 GWh to 11.2 GWh. The capacity of German pumped storage plants is around 6 GW.
Declining exports and exchange electricity prices
After an export surplus of 27.1 TWh was achieved in electricity trading in 2022, an import surplus of 11.7 TWh was recorded in 2023. This was due in particular to the lower electricity generation costs in neighbouring European countries in the summer and the high costs of CO2-certificates. The majority of imports came from Denmark (10.7 TWh), Norway (4.6 TWh) and Sweden (2.9 TWh). Germany exported electricity to Austria (5.8 TWh) and Luxembourg (3.6 TWh).
In winter, electricity exchange prices rose again and CO2-certificates became more favourable. This already led to a balance in November and, in conjunction with high wind power generation, to export surpluses in December. In contrast to its neighbouring countries (Austria, Switzerland, France), Germany also has sufficient power plant capacity in winter to produce electricity for export.
The average volume-weighted day-ahead price Exchange electricity price fell sharply to €92.29/MWh or 9.23 cents/kWh (2022: €230.57/MWh). This puts it back at the 2021 level.
A detailed presentation of the data on electricity generation, imports/exports, prices, installed capacity, emissions and climate data can be found on the Energy Charts Server: www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2023.pdf
This first version of the annual evaluation takes into account all electricity generation data from the Leipzig electricity exchange EEX and the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) up to and including 31 December 2023. The quarter-hourly values from the EEX were energetically corrected using the available monthly data from the Federal Statistical Office on electricity generation up to September 2023. For the remaining months, the correction factors were estimated on the basis of past monthly and annual data. The extrapolated values from October to December are subject to larger tolerances.
This is based on the data for the German Net electricity generation to the public electricity supply. It is the difference between gross electricity generation and the power plants' own consumption and is fed into the public grid. The electricity industry calculates with net figures, e.g. for electricity trading and grid utilisation, and only net electricity generation is traded on the electricity exchanges. It represents the electricity mix that actually comes out of the socket at home.
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