page_title: District heating
section_title: Austria
hierarchical_section_title: District heating / National variation / Cogeneration in Europe / Austria
caption_attribution_description: English: Biomass Power Plant Deutsch: Biomasseheizkraftwerk Ramingdorf der Bioenergie Steyr
context_page_description: District heating is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating. The heat is often obtained from a cogeneration plant burning fossil fuels or biomass, but heat-only boiler stations, geothermal heating, heat pumps and central solar heating are also used, as well as heat waste from nuclear power electricity generation. District heating plants can provide higher efficiencies and better pollution control than localized boilers. According to some research, district heating with combined heat and power is the cheapest method of cutting carbon emissions, and has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all fossil generation plants. Fifth generation district heat networks do not use combustion on-site and have zero emissions of CO2 and NO2 on-site; they employ heat transfer which uses electricity which may be generated from renewable energy, or from remote fossil fuelled power stations. A combination of CHP and centralized heat pumps are used in the Stockholm multi energy system.
context_section_description: The largest district heating system in Austria is in Vienna (Fernwärme Wien) – with many smaller systems distributed over the whole country.
  District heating in Vienna is run by Wien Energie. In the business year of 2004/2005 a total of 5.163 GWh was sold, 1.602 GWh to 251.224 private apartments and houses and 3.561 GWh to 5211 major customers. The three large municipal waste incinerators provide 22% of the total in producing 116 GWh electric power and 1.220 GWh heat. Waste heat from municipal power plants and large industrial plants account for 72% of the total. The remaining 6% is produced by peak heating boilers from fossil fuel. A biomass-fired power plant has produced heat since 2006.
  In the rest of Austria the newer district heating plants are constructed as biomass plants or as CHP-biomass plants like the biomass district heating of Mödling or the biomass district heating of Baden.
  Most of the older fossil-fired district heating systems have a district heating accumulator, so that it is possible to produce the thermal district heating power only at that time where the electric power price is high.
caption: The District Heating Power Plant Steyr is a renewable combined heat and power plant in which wood chips are used to generate power[55]
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