The REGENERATE research project is part of the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership and is funded in Germany by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK). In this European joint project, the Department of Land Management, Department of Spatial and Infrastructure Planning and the Institute of Geotechnics at TU Darmstadt are working together with researchers from Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Graz University of Technology (Austria), Universitatea Tehnica Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and numerous partners from the field in order to make tunnels and underground structures usable as renewable heat sources.

While there are already pilot projects for heat recovery in new tunnels, the REGENERATE project will be the first to collect data from existing tunnel structures in order to determine the thermal potential under a wide range of environmental conditions. The possibility of storing heat in traffic and wastewater tunnels will also be investigated. The integration of the new energy sources into existing district heating networks, as well as into new local heating networks, will be examined under technical, legal, economic and social aspects.

With technological innovations in the field of heat generation and social innovations in heat network planning, the project is making an important contribution to the heat transition in Germany and Europe.