Wien Energie

District heating lets Viennese vegetables grow

(Bild: Wien Energie)

In Vienna, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes from local cultivation are available almost all year round. This high level of supply security for the city is guaranteed by district heating.

What do cucumbers and district heating in Vienna have in common? Both are local products, they come to a large extent from Simmering and ensure a secure supply of both heat and food in our city! Since the mid-1990s, Wien Energie has ensured the energy supply of many market gardens in the 11th district with its own district heating network. One of these is the Kasehs nursery.

Karl Kasehs jun(Bild: Wien Energie)

A cucumber for every Viennese
There is a high probability that a cucumber in Vienna has come from this traditional company since 1886. This is because Kasehs harvests around 2 million gherkins a year and sells them mainly in Vienna - in other words, a gherkin for every Viennese. The family business has been connected to the district heating system since 1995 and is now run by Karl Kasehs Jr. together with his parents.

"We used to heat the nursery with oil boilers. That was laborious and the maintenance took a lot of time. I can still remember my father having to get up at night to keep the system running. Since switching to district heating, we've saved time and energy and sleep through the night."

Geschäftsführer Karl Kasehs jun

Viennese cucumbers taste better
The short transportation routes to Viennese retailers mean that the vegetables from Simmering can ripen for longer and therefore taste particularly good. Thanks to district heating, the gardener always manages to maintain exactly the right temperature in his greenhouses, so that the vegetables have ideal growing conditions and no fungal diseases can develop. The use of pesticides can therefore be completely dispensed with. " High quality in every form is very important to us," explains Karl Kasehs Jr. "Wien Energie's district heating helps us to ensure this all year round."

The Vienna district heating system:

Vienna's district heating network is 1,300 kilometers long, making it one of the largest in Europe. And: it is constantly being expanded!

460,000 Viennese households and 7,800 major customers are currently supplied with district heating.

70 megawatts of district heating capacity are added every year: That is equivalent to the heating requirements of around 20,000 households per year, and it is increasing. Wien Energie plans to increase the expansion to up to 90 megawatts per year in future.

By2030, more than half of the district heating is to come from renewable sources and

by 2040, Wien Energie wants to generate all of its district heating from renewable energy sources.

56 percent of Vienna'sheating requirements are to be covered by district heating by 2040 - today the figure is around 40 percent.

More information on district heating can be found HERE

Heat from Vienna for Vienna
In Vienna, a 1,300 kilometer-long district heating network already supplies 460,000 households and 8,000 businesses with district heating. Even today, district heating is already much more environmentally friendly than gas heating and saves around 1.5 million tons of CO2 every year. By 2040, district heating will be generated completely climate-neutrally in Vienna and for Vienna without fossil fuels. This not only has the advantage of making Vienna independent of global energy crises and exploding wholesale prices, but also of making prices more stable. Wien Energie is investing over one billion euros in this over the next five years.