How people live and what mobility services they find in their surroundings determine the costs and the environmental balance of their daily journeys. Municipalities and companies can reduce housing costs with measures for sustainable mobility.
In Austria, a household spends an average of 5,100 euros a year on mobility, 95 percent of which is spent on the car. It pays to plan for mobility in housing construction and settlement development.
A housing location with walking distances and good infrastructure is the basis for lower transport costs. Since central plots of land are more expensive, mobility offers that help to keep the construction of underground garages or the land consumption for above-ground parking spaces low significantly reduce construction costs. At the same time, mobility offers that avoid the dependence on one's own car reduce the expenses for mobility.
From energy-saving house to transport-saving house
Significant progress has been made in the energy efficiency of residential buildings. However, climate-friendly mobility only plays a subordinate role in planning. However, residential projects need the integration of sustainable mobility concepts already in the planning stage. The concept of the energy-saving house must be further developed into a transport-saving house. The housing construction enables the right climate-friendly mobility offer for every way without the need for a car. Urban and spatial planning ensure short distances and a dense public transport network.
Every year, around 40,000 flats are built in new buildings in Austria. Eight out of ten everyday journeys begin or end at home. Where we live and what mobility services are available in the residential environment has a great influence on our mobility behaviour.
Including climate-friendly mobility in the planning of housing and settlement development reduces both construction costs and mobility costs.
"Instead of the obligation to build car parking spaces, offers for climate-friendly mobility should be created. In many places, expensively built underground car parks have a high vacancy rate."
The Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs and the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) support municipalities that want to use new approaches to activate more unused land for housing construction. To this end, the cities employ inner development managers and expand active inner development with various building blocks. The model projects in Aalen, Berlin, Hamburg-Altona, Ludwigsfelde, Offenburg, Regensburg, Solingen and Trier receive financial support and expert advice.
While two large providers are planning a merger, another company is entering the market in Munich with Oply. But it is still open when the city can actively promote the rental system.
Energiedienst's power-to-gas plant in Grenzach-Wyhlen is allowed to produce emission-free hydrogen from green electricity as of today. Photo: energiedienst.de
At a hydroelectric power plant operated by the energy company Energiedienst in Grenzach-Wylen, the production of green hydrogen has been running successfully for four months. The project produces 500 kilograms of hydrogen per day.
Hydrogen from hydropower: successful start for one of the largest power-to-gas plants in Germany to date. This is reported by the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW). The megawatt plant has been in operation for four months in April 2020 and is functioning reliably. A research electrolyser connected to it is also running successfully. The ZSW is coordinating the project. The operator of the commercial plant is the energy supplier Energiedienst AG.
The power-to-gas plant with an electrical connected load of one megawatt produces renewable hydrogen using electricity from the Rhine hydroelectric power plant in Wyhlen. Since it is not necessary to use the public electricity grid, grid fees and the EEG surcharge do not apply. In addition, high full load hours can be achieved because the hydropower is available practically around the clock. This further improves the economic efficiency and enables extensive operating experience to be gained quickly.
He said the plant has been running regularly since early December 2019 and has had 1,850 hours of operation since then. Previously, it was in trial operation. The monitoring system set up by the ZSW, which measures all essential components and subsystems, functions perfectly. The plant operates fully automatically in 24-hour operation both at full load and in various partial load conditions.
Efficiency of 66 percent
The ZSW monitors operation with the help of remote data transmission to Stuttgart and automated data evaluation. The overall efficiency of electricity to high-purity hydrogen compressed to 300 bar is currently up to 66 percent in relation to the calorific value of the gas. In addition, the researchers are investigating ageing effects and deriving potential improvements from the data.
So far, the plant has filled 62 trailers with hydrogen suitable for fuel cells. Each of these transportable containers holds around 300 kilograms. The plant can produce up to 500 kilograms of hydrogen per day. This is enough for an average daily mileage of more than 1,000 fuel cell cars.
Improved electrolysis
The research project docked to the commercial plant is also progressing positively. In a research plant, the scientists are testing improved electrolysis blocks with a maximum output of 300 kilowatts in parallel operation with the commercial plant. They should further reduce the price of hydrogen. But companies could also test and optimize components there.
Last year, the ZSW and its research partners already achieved an initial success during the test operation of the plant: with new electrode coatings, the researchers achieved 20 percent more power density compared to the electrolysis blocks of the industrial plant section. This means that less volume and material are required for the same output.
Goal: Halve hydrogen price
Since the investment costs are also based on the construction volume and the electrolysis units account for the largest share of costs in the conversion of renewable electricity at around 40 percent, progress in this area is automatically reflected in the price of hydrogen. For manufacturers of electrolysis plants, development is therefore an important factor for further cost reduction. The long-term goal of the ZSW researchers and Energiedienst engineers is to roughly halve the current production costs of electricity-based hydrogen.
The state of Baden-Württemberg supports the Lighthouse project with a total of 4.5 million euros. In 2019, a project based on this was selected by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology as one of the winners of the first round of the "Reallabore der Energiewende" ideas competition. A total of twelve partners are on board for this major project.
We use cookies to optimize our website and services.
Functional
Always active
Technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a particular service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that have not been requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access, which is solely for statistical purposes.Technical storage or access used solely for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary consent from your Internet service provider, or additional records from third parties, information stored or accessed for this purpose cannot generally be used alone to identify you.
Marketing
Technical storage or access is necessary to create user profiles, to send advertising or to track the user on a website or across multiple websites for similar marketing purposes.
