Auswirkungen der Energiewende auf das deutsche Gastransportsystem

Against the background of the long-term goals of the "Energiewende" and the German ratification of the Paris climate protection agreement, both the substitution of fossil fuels like natural gas by renewable energies as well as an increase in energy efficiency in the energy system are indispensable. This requires a radical transformation of the energy system, including the gas system, with associated risks for the actors involved. Political and gas industry decision makers therefore need information on the expected future demand for gas in the German energy mix to plan adequately the expansion of the capital-intensive gas transport infrastructure. These investments often have payback periods of up to several decades. In practice, expansion planning today is carried out regularly with special consideration of import dependency and supply security in network development plans of the responsible transmission system operators. The assumed development of gas demand in the 2016 network development plan, however, does not take into account the objectives of energy system transformation. This thesis develops a methodology to include the “Energiewende” objectives defined well beyond these ten years by 2050 in an assessment of the German gas transport system. Based on a detailed analysis of the current situation of the gas transport system, a scenario analysisis carried out in order to obtain plausible gas demand developments by 2050. From these, relevant grid utilization cases for the gas transport network are derived and investigated using the highly flexible GASOPT load flow model developed within the framework of this work. The suitability of GASOPT for the load flow calculation is demonstrated qualitatively by a backtesting calculation of the peak load situation 2015 and quantitatively by a subsequent verification. The results of this thesis show that the gas transport network is only slightly utilized in the long term if the goals of the “Energiewende” are achieved due to a reduction in demand of more than 50 %. The compensation of several failing import routes, e.g. in Eastern Europe or even completely depleted natural gas storage facilities with simultaneous full load operation of gas-fired power plants is technically possible. The full substitution of fossil natural gas by methane produced climate-neutrally using "power-to-gas" is also manageable from the grid side. The long-term economic efficiency of grid sections with low capacity utilization and their rededication to alternative energy sources such as hydrogen can be examined in view of the significant reduction in gas transport demand. Furthermore, the analysis of consequences for the actors involved in the gas transport system shows that the business model of operators of large underground storage facilities in particular will be endangered, as import capacities exceed the required gas withdrawals in the future