Eight banks are providing €1 billion financing to BEW Berliner Energie und Wärme, including €100 million from KfW IPEX-Bank.

BEW is the operator of the largest district heating system in Western Europe and the German capital's central heating supplier.

The signing of the loan completes the first financing round following the sale of BEW by Vattenfall to the state of Berlin, and secures the company's capital requirements until at least the end of March 2027.

With this short-term financing in place, the company will now work on a longer-term debt package running through to 2030, for which it intends to get an external credit rating.

“We are setting the course for a financially secure heating transition in Berlin at an early stage,” says BEW chief financial officer Axel Pinkert. “We are in a solid financial position to consistently drive forward the transformation of our energy generation and make Berlin's heating supply climate-neutral.”

The company plans to completely phase out coal combustion by 2030 and rely on a combination of industrial waste heat, natural gas, power-to-heat, large heat pumps, biomass, and heat storage. The complete decarbonization of district heating generation is to be completed by 2045. In addition to hydrogen, geothermal energy will then be increasingly used for district heating.

With over 140 years of history, BEW employs around 2,200 employees and provides climate-friendly district heating and hot water to 700,000 apartments – more than a third of Berlin's two million apartments – as well as 8,000 other buildings such as schools, libraries and museums.

The company also supplies locally generated heating and cooling and offers individual decentralized energy solutions.