Construction of the Frick heating plant begins with a groundbreaking ceremony
The Basel energy supplier IWB is building the Frick heating network. A woodchip heating centre is being built on the site of Stahlton Bauteile AG to generate climate-friendly heat. IWB will supply the community with climate-friendly heat from autumn 2024.
Industriellen Werke Basel(IWB) has begun construction of a new woodchip heating plant for the planned heat centre on the company premises of Stahlton Bauteile AG, based in Frick. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 4 July 2023.
According to a media release, the first customers will have access to heat from renewable production from autumn 2024. The raw material will be wood from the Thiersteinberg forest district. Currently, every third heating system in Frick is still fossil-fuelled.
Regarding the efficiency of the heat network, IWB will be able to generate up to 20 gigawatt hours of heat per year. The savings potential for the community of Frick is 2700 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. The expansion of the pipeline network for the regenerative heat supply is to begin in autumn 2023.
The CEO of Stahlton Bauteile AG, Ernst Gisin, quoted in the press release, emphasises the company’s long-standing commitment to sustainability. “Among other things, we built the thermally activated office building to Minergie-P standard twelve years ago and have had a PV system with an output of one megawatt peak in operation for a year.” The next step, he says, is to replace the natural gas heating system in production by connecting it to the central heating system.