Biomass custody work in St. Pölten: The key to green energy!

Biomass custody work in St. Pölten: The key to green energy!

On May 26, 2025, the Energy State Secretary Elisabeth Zehetner and MP Harald Servus visited the construction site of the new biomass heating unit in St. Pölten. This power plant, which is created in cooperation between the city of St. Pölten, the Industry and EVN, will intelligently replace the KWK system that is over 30 years old. With an investment volume of around 50 million euros, the commissioning of the system is planned for 2026.

The new biomass custody plant is the fourth large biomass-power-heat pairing system of EVN in Lower Austria, in addition to similar plants in Baden, Mödling and Krems. In addition, another system in Steyr is operated together with Energie AG. These power plants use regional biomass, especially damaged wood, to produce environmentally friendly electricity and heat. The biomass steam boiler with a fuel heat output of 34 MW produces steam for a 6 MW turbine and feeds the waste heat into the district heating network.

supply and benefit of the system

The heating power plant will be able to supply up to 30,000 households with natural heat and to supply an additional 15,000 households with green electricity. The annual need for wood chips is around 300,000 quorum meters. The switch to biomass is to achieve annual CO₂ savings of around 25,000 tons.

The steam requirement of the local companies, such as Salzer Papier GmbH, Salzer Formtech GmbH and Sunpor Kunststoff GmbH, is directly covered. This change is part of a comprehensive energy reform that not only contributes to the creation of sustainable jobs, but also serves regional added value. Currently, two thirds of the district heating requirement come from the waste heat of the EVN waste recycling system in Dürn tube. The district heating transport line to St. Pölten has a length of 31 km and has a temperature loss of only 2 ° C.

Development of the biomass-up heat in Lower Austria

at the end of 2024 in Lower Austria there were a total of 8,66 local biomass heating systems and 36 biomass-KWK systems in operation, which corresponds to the total number of 902 systems. This means that the installed biomass boiler performance is around 934 MW, which means that over 130,000 households are supplied with heat from biomass.

The Biomass-Naber heating systems achieved considerable CO₂ savings of around 472,598 tons per year in 2023. The value creation, which is generated by the delivery of forest chopping and straw in the region, amounts to around 88.88 million euros annually. These developments show how important the use of biomass is for the production of heat and electricity and how it contributes to the reduction of greenhouse gases.

biomass includes organic substances that are used as an energy source and plays a crucial role in the energy transition. In Germany, the installed performance of the bioen energy systems in 2023 was around 9.9 gigawatts, and a sixth of the green electricity was produced by biomass. These trends indicate a global increase in the use of biomass as a sustainable energy source.