TU Wien leads Advanced Bioenergy Lab Austria project

TU Wien has assumed leadership of the Advanced Bioenergy Lab Austria, a project designed to produce sustainable fuels from forestry biomass and biogenic raw materials. The facility is described as the first of its kind globally to integrate both Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) and Fischer-Tropsch Diesel (FT-Diesel) production.

The project aims to create a circular process that utilizes residues from the agricultural and forestry sectors to produce fossil-free fuels, potentially reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 percent. This initiative received 28 million euros in public funding. The project follows a study commissioned by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management, which suggested that producing green energy carriers from forestry biomass could significantly assist in meeting Austria's climate goals.

Separately, research from the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) highlights how climate change will impact Europe's power systems. Using the SECURES-Energy dataset, researchers found that rising temperatures will increase cooling demand by up to 149 percent under strong climate change scenarios, while heating demand is expected to decrease by up to 40 percent by the end of the century.