Viennese consumers heat with banknotes – district heating is too expensive!

Viennese consumers heat with banknotes – district heating is too expensive!

In Vienna, the district heating market is currently causing a lot of conversation. A new study has found that district heating prices in the Austrian capital are the highest in the country. This could not only lead to discontent among the 440,000 households that use Wien Energie as the largest provider, but has also led to creative solutions, as the case of Josef Hack from Simmering shows. The 45-year-old man heats his apartment with banknotes and has found an unusual but cost-effective way to combat the high prices. According to Tagespresse, his expenditure is well below the minimum costs of a conventional district heating tariff, which would have cost him 203 euros. Instead, he uses 10 euro bills to heat his kettle and plans to use a total of 200 euros in bills to treat himself to a warm shower.

But why does Hack burn money? The reason is obvious: a change of provider is due to a lack of technical equipment, and the decline in district heating prices in Vienna, which is assumed for the coming heating season, does not change the structural problems of the market. Energy News Magazine reports that although Wien Energie will reduce prices after a huge increase last year, average district heating costs are still 25% higher than two years ago. The price reductions are pleasing for many users, but the economic burden remains a major issue.

Price reductions and the path to decarbonization

This year, Wien Energie put together an extensive “energy aid package” worth 340 million euros to counteract rising costs. Of this, 86 million euros are attributable to district heating discounts, while households with price notices receive a basic and energy price discount of 20%. The goal is to make the heating sector, which accounts for 47% of total domestic energy consumption, more sustainable. Currently, over half of Vienna's district heating comes from natural gas combined heat and power plants and a third comes from waste incineration.

However, the political framework conditions are anything but optimal. The slow phase-out of oil and gas heating represents an obstacle to achieving climate goals. A switch to sustainable sources should take place through the expansion of district heating and deep geothermal energy, and Energy News Magazine reports that the first test drillings have already been started together with OMV in order to increase the geothermal energy share to over a quarter by 2040. A newly planned large-scale heat pump in Simmering will also use waste heat and generate district heating for up to 112,000 households by 2027.

The outlook for Viennese households

In summary, Vienna faces a challenge with regard to district heating. Despite the reduced prices and the promising approaches to decarbonization, the satisfaction of many customers remains questionable. Hack and his creative heating method are just one example of what many Viennese think: “There has to be a solution!” It fits seamlessly into this picture that Wien Energie generated a profit of 386 million euros in 2022, which did not come from customer business, but from wholesale, which raises the question of fair prices for end consumers.

Vienna remains an exciting place, both for innovations and challenges in the area of ​​energy supply. It will be interesting to see how the situation develops in the coming months and whether consumers remain limited to creative solutions.