Research

The Alt Erlaa residential park is one of Austria's largest non-profit housing complexes and a leading social housing project with a supraregional impact. The satisfaction and loyalty of the people living here to their residential environment is above average. Decarb Alt Erlaa 2, building on a previous exploratory study, is looking into the possibilities of transforming the Alt Erlaa residential park into a climate-neutral neighborhood. The aim is to convert the heating system of the residential complex and preserve this architectural gem. The residential complex is currently heated by several gas boilers and is in a state of disrepair. With its unusual dimensions, its architectural and socio-economic significance, and its energy-intensive construction standards from the 1970s and 1980s, the residential complex offers very promising but also very challenging conditions for its development into a climate-neutral neighborhood. This demonstration project will accompany the implementation of the exploratory results, which will take place in the coming years. With its considerable size, the residential park is well suited to initiating and implementing substantial technological and social innovations.

Energy and CO2 savings through CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage) and resource and energy efficiency through industrial symbiosis are two essential approaches to decarbonizing industry. At the level of the IEA TCP (Technology Collaboration Programme) "Industrial Energy Technologies and Systems," Task 21 was therefore established at the initiative of the Climate and Energy Fund, operationally executed by the Energy Institute at JKU Linz, and has since been led over two periods. Key Austrian responsibilities in the newly announced third period, which includes two subtasks (#4 Carbon Dioxide Capture in Industry and #5 Facilitation of Industrial Symbiosis), are the leadership of the entire Task 21, the leadership of Subtask 4, as well as substantive contributions to both subtasks. Additionally, dissemination and communication requirements include sharing Austrian findings internationally and bringing international knowledge to Austria. The subtasks focus on CO2 management, legal frameworks for CCUS, new value chains and associated stakeholders, technological integration in industry, tools to enable industrial symbiosis, and a non-technical assessment of the status of cooperation. The international work is accompanied by a comprehensive national communication and dissemination strategy, ensuring stakeholder engagement and bidirectional knowledge transfer.

The continuous anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases is further driving human-induced climate change. There is a general consensus among industry, politics, and science that the further rise in temperature must be limited. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report states that in order to meet the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement, in addition to transforming the energy system and continuously reducing CO2 emissions, negative CO2 emissions will also be necessary. In this context, BECCUS (Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Utilization/Storage) is expected to be a key technology to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions in the coming decades. Particular potential is attributed to the Temperature Swing Adsorption (TSA) technology, which can significantly reduce energy demand compared to state-of-the-art technologies. A suitable initial implementation sector is the food industry, where there is high energy demand, but CO2 can also be directly utilized in processes. The captured CO2 can thus be considered not only as an emission and an undesirable byproduct of thermal conversion processes but also as a product within a value chain, even without CO2 storage. To this end, an existing laboratory prototype is to be adapted in an exploratory project and installed at a real production site in the food industry, with the aim of testing and verifying acceptance and robustness in a "real-world laboratory." This will lay the foundation for further development of the technology in terms of scaling up and simplifying the technology. On the topic of acceptance and robustness, stakeholder workshops with industry representatives will be conducted, ideally including representatives of alternative solution concepts. Another part of the exploratory project concerns the possibilities of later offering the technology or technology package on the market. The current idea is to deliver the necessary plant technology for CO2 capture and supply as a complete system, including operation, and to allocate the total costs to the amount of CO2 provided.