Deutscher Städtetag: Brochure on planning practice and planning culture in German cities
Published
The planning practice and planning culture of German cities are the focus of a comprehensive handout produced with the cooperation of the German Association of Cities and Towns and the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development. The brochure brings together 55 projects from 34 cities that show how multifaceted municipal planning practice is implemented in Germany. The documentation of successful projects and exemplary Planning Processes offers a rich fund of ideas and is intended to encourage new approaches. It covers a broad spectrum of good practice and innovative solutions on strategic concepts, citizen participation, housing, urban design, urban renewal, neighbourhood management or mobility. The brochure, published in April 2016, is addressed to representatives of local politics, administration and civil society initiatives in cities, but also offers inspiring practical examples for research and teaching.
Almost 30,000 cyclists came to the rally in Hamburg to demonstrate for better cycling conditions. The highlight for many participants: the tour over the Köhlbrand Bridge.
A total of 150 million hectares of destroyed forest to be rebuilt
An important milestone in the Federal Environment Ministry's international nature conservation and climate protection policy has been reached. The so-called "Bonn Challenge" initiated by Germany to rebuild forests has succeeded in getting countries to pledge a total of 150 million hectares. The goal was reached yesterday at the first Bonn Challenge regional conference for Asia in Palembang, Indonesia. There, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka announced further contributions to forest reconstruction. In Bonn in 2011, on Germany's initiative, numerous countries agreed to restore 150 million hectares of destroyed forests worldwide by 2020.
Environment State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth, who attended the conference on behalf of Germany, congratulated Alex Noerdin, Governor of South Sumatra Province and host of the regional conference: "The Bonn Challenge has created incredible global momentum for forest restoration. When we launched the Bonn Challenge in 2011, no one could have imagined that we would reach the 150 million hectare target three years ahead of schedule. The encouragement that countries in the region here in Palembang have given to the Bonn Challenge, and that they are also using it for their national initiatives, shows that in 2011 we kicked off a groundbreaking development for global forest restoration with the Bonn Challenge."
Berlin, 22 October 2018: Vattenfall Energy Solutions, Gewobag and the energy storage start-up Lumenion are jointly piloting a new type of sector-coupled steel storage system at Bottroper Weg in Berlin-Tegel, which absorbs regional generation peaks from wind and solar energy in a grid-serving manner and later provides the renewable energy as heat and electricity in line with demand.
"With this pilot project, we want to demonstrate the particular technical and economic suitability of thermal storage systems for the effective utilisation of large quantities of wind and solar energy in a very practical way," says Alexander Voigt, founder and Managing Director of Lumenion. "Some of our team have been working with renewable energies for over 30 years and with energy storage systems for over ten years. Based on this experience, we made a conscious decision in favour of steel as a storage medium for the second phase of the energy transition, which is just beginning."
The Lumenion steel storage system stores "electricity peaks" for less than 2 cent/KWh in a cost- and space-efficient manner at up to 650° Celsius as heat, which can be converted back into electricity using a turbine unit if required - or used entirely as heat. As a co-founder of Solon, Q-Cells and Younicos, among others, Voigt has been successfully launching solar modules and storage systems on the market since the 1990s.
Hanno Balzer, Managing Director of Vattenfall Energy Solutions GmbH: "Decentralised systems and energy storage are key factors in the energy transition; heat is a particularly cost-effective form of storage. If the stored energy can then be utilised not only as heat but also in the form of electricity, that is a milestone. The high-temperature storage system brings us a big step closer to this!"
Karsten Mitzinger from Gewobag Energie- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft adds: "The energy transition can only succeed if it is decentralised and based on partnership. As a housing industry, we are making our contribution to climate protection in our neighbourhoods. With this project, we are pleased to be able to demonstrate the good cooperation between energy supply companies, municipal housing associations and innovative start-ups. Only together can we master the major challenges of the energy transition."
In the Tegler pilot project, a 2.4 megawatt hour (MWh) storage block is being trialled for commercial use and transferred to regular operation. To this end, the unit will be integrated with an existing gas-powered CHP unit from Vattenfall Energy Solutions into the neighbourhood electricity and local heating supply of a 1970s apartment building owned by Gewobag. The storage system will temporarily absorb any power peaks that are not required and feed them into the heat supply later on as needed. In a second step, a reconversion into electricity is also planned.
Parallel to the construction of the pilot project, Lumenion is testing a 450 kWh prototype on the campus of the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in Oberschöneweide. The HTW is supporting Lumenion with practical accompanying research in the development, testing and validation of data, as well as in the regulation and operational management of the innovative storage system.
In further projects, Lumenion storage systems with 40 MWh and even 1,400 MWh are to be created as the next milestones. These giga-storages can integrate existing and newly added large quantities of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar power into the existing grids in a particularly favourable, efficient and demand-oriented manner, thus enabling a significant acceleration of the energy transition.
200 years ago, Karl Freiherr von Drais built the first bicycle - an invention with far-reaching consequences. A song of praise for the smartest means of transport.
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