Image: Roman Kloibhofer
For historical reasons, Austria has a lot of hydropower and biogenic combustibles and fuels. Recently, however, the expansion of wind and solar energy, as well as the switch to heat pumps, has picked up, while energy production from fossil fuels has declined, according to a report by the Ministry of Climate Change. However, fossils dominated final energy consumption.
However, the generation of primary energy only plays a subordinate role in the overall energy supply. Austria’s energy supply is heavily dependent on imports. Domestic primary energy production in 2022 was around 510 petajoules, and imports totaled around 1,180 petajoules. Around 170 petajoules were exported.
Plus 36 percent for solar energy
Primary energy generation from photovoltaics increased by 36.3 percent in 2022, and that from wind power increased by 7.5 percent. Heat pumps generated 6.6 percent more energy. In contrast, production from gas fell by 5.8 percent and that from oil by 8.2 percent. Hydropower (-10.4 percent) and biogenic energies, such as biomass or biogas (-3.5 percent), were still the most important energy sources in primary energy production.
A different picture emerges when it comes to energy imports. Fossil fuels dominate here. Austria imports around seven times as much energy as it exports. In 2022, a particularly large amount of fossil gas was imported to fill domestic storage facilities and continue to ensure supplies in view of the war in Ukraine.
The final energy consumption is also largely characterized by fossil fuels. In 2022, oil accounted for 35.4 percent and gas for 16.8 percent. Electricity accounted for 21.5 percent, biogenic energy made up 14.3 percent. Here, too, the importance of fossils has decreased in recent years, while the proportion of renewables is steadily increasing, albeit slowly.
Steady rise
The contribution of wind and solar energy to domestic power generation has steadily increased in recent years. Electricity production from wind increased by 7.5 percent year-on-year in 2022, contributing 11.2 percent to electricity generation. In 2005, the share was still around 2 percent. The newly installed capacity was 315 megawatts (MW) in 2022, according to the “Energy in Austria” report. The data is based on provisional figures from Statistics Austria.
Photovoltaic systems contributed almost 6 percent to domestic electricity production in 2022. The newly installed PV output broke the gigawatt mark for the first time in 2022: specifically, systems with a peak output of 1,010 megawatts (MWp) were installed. The cumulative total output has more than doubled to 3.8 GWpeak since 2019.
The demand for heat pumps that use ambient heat from the air, ground or groundwater for space heating and hot water production has also increased in recent years. Around 61,000 heat pumps were installed in 2022, more than twice as many as in 2019. A total of 441,000 heat pumps were in operation in Germany in 2022.
Source: Nachrichten
