GIS-Based Assessment of Regional Biomass Potentials for Heat and Power Generation at the Example of Ludwigsburg County, Germany

The county of Ludwigsburg is located in the centre of Baden-Württemberg, in Germany’s south-western corner. It covers an area of approximately 265 square miles, with a population of about 550,000 inhabitants, spread across 39 municipalities. In 2013, the county set itself a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent until 2050 through inceased energy efficiency and increasing the share renewable energy sources for heat and power generation.
In light of this, an assessment of the biomass potential for heat and power generation for the county of Ludwigsburg is presented here. Our study uses Digital Landscape Models (DLM) in the open CityGML data format to calculate the local biomass potential, and couples these with our workflow-based urban simulation platform SimStadt. Since the landscape type for each relevant polygon in the DLM is known (wood, shrub, agriculture), crops can be allocated to the agricultural polygons based on statistical data. In a next step, biomass potentials per polygon are catogorized into for example energy wood, bioethanol, biogas, or vegetable oil.
In Ludwigsburg, the local biomass potential amounts to about 761 GWh/a, or 4% of total energy demand (based on 2012 demand data). This compares favourably to an actual biomass share of 2% of total energy demand (in 2012).