Meeting of the Hamburg Regional Stakeholder Group and exchange with representatives from Berlin, Graz and Basel

From 4 to 5 June 2025, ZEBAU, together with IBA Hamburg GmbH, organized an exchange meeting with representatives of the Hamburg Regional Stakeholder Group and guests from Basel, Berlin and Graz. The focus was on heat transformation as part of integrated urban development in accordance with the Energy Equilibrium Road Map.

Various projects from Hamburg and from the partner cities were presented, the Energy Bunker in Wilhelmsburg was visited, and participants gained a detailed insight into the topic of deep geothermal energy and storage. The Energy Equilibrium Platform and Roadmap were presented during the meeting.

The first day of the event began with a welcome address by the organizers and a greeting from the management of IBA Hamburg GmbH. Subsequently, local strategies and planning examples from the various cities were presented with a focus on “Energy Transformation,” including municipal heat planning in Hamburg and Kiel, the transformation of the Hamburg city grid by Hamburger Energiewerke and the BTB district heating network in Berlin, as well as neighborhood developments in Graz. Key questions addressed the potential for decarbonization, the role of decentralized versus centralized heat supply, prospects for energy storage and green gases, and specific challenges for municipalities.

The afternoon focused on implementation projects in new and existing neighborhoods, addressing, among other things, success factors for climate-neutral neighborhood development, land use conflicts in the use of renewable energies, and the transferability of smaller-scale solutions to urban contexts. Contributions from Hamburg included several projects presented by BUKEA and the urban developments by IBA Hamburg GmbH, the Climate Pioneer City Graz project, and the CleanTech Business Park in Berlin.

The afternoon program included an excursion to the Energy Bunker in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg. There, innovative approaches to heat supply, particularly the development of medium-depth geothermal energy, were shown, accompanied by a tour of the building and the power plant.

On the second day, further innovative implementation projects were presented. The focus was primarily on geothermal development in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, as well as seasonal heat storage solutions such as the “GeoSpeicherBerlin” real-world laboratory and new funding formats such as “URBAN ARENA.”

The event concluded with a discussion on current priorities and the deepening of cooperation within the DACH network. EU Interreg Baltic Sea project “Energy Equilibrium” with the completed tool and the “Road Map” for planning municipal decarbonization strategies and the use of various energy generation and storage options were presented.

We would like to thank IBA Hamburg GmbH for the possibility to use the impressive IBA Dock and all speakers for their interesting input.

This article was prepared by German partner ZEBAU.

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