Website: www.greencities.eu
Summary
European Green Cities is a targeted EU-Thermie project within the building sector, which in project
period 1996-2001 received funding of a total of 2.9 million EUR. Cenergia Energy Consultants
coordinates the project in cooperation with Green City Denmark. The project focus on large-scale urban
renewal plan and new building in 11 European cities and it involves close to 30.000 residences. An
important part of the project was to realise local solar energy/low-energy demonstration project with a
total of 1000 solar energy/low-energy dwellings in Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, England, Belgium and
Austria and also public buildings in Finland and Greece.
The EGC project demonstrates high savings of energy for heating, water and electricity compared with normal practise. New build and renovation projects with different level of energy savings technologies are included in the Target project with different performance and savings.
Results
The aim of the EGC projects is to make energy efficient buildings. The key figures are the energy consumption for space heating, domestic hot water and electrical appliance. The consumptions during the first operation years are monitored and the results are shown in figure 2 together with what is normal practise in each country (Reference). The savings are very different between projects with a maximum of 70% in the Houtvenne-project (Belgium). Also a high degree of savings in electricity and water is demonstrated in the projects. Some of the projects only demonstrate a small reduction in the total energy consumption mainly because of old housing block with pure facilities for the tenants are transformed to modern dwellings with high level of comfort and indoor air quality.
Figure: Monitored energy savings of the EGC projects together with normal standard (reference).
The economic viability of the EGC projects is calculated by the Simple Payback Time method. For each project the total costs of the installation, excluding the costs associated with the demonstration, i.e. design, monitoring, and a part of the management and engineering costs are calculated. The yearly savings include annual amount of energy produced or saved and savings in water.
The simple pay back time of the extra investment costs varies between projects. Two of the projects have a total pay back time of 10 years for all used new technologies on the actual project and other projects have a higher total payback time. Each project has used a number of different energy savings technologies with different shorter or longer pay back time than mentioned average/total calculation. During the project period a cost benefit analysis has been carried out with actual input from the demonstration projects, like investment costs and savings. The analysis shows that the most economic attractive investments are different from one project to another depending in local energy costs and the climatic conditions. The analysis include a list for each location with the most economic investment in low energy technologies of today and it is expected it will be extended in the future when the energy costs increase and the investment costs decrease.
The objective of introducing an integrated sustainable low-energy design approach for the use of best available technologies in new-built and retrofit building demonstration projects was met very successfully. Among best documentation is the highly interest within local areas and regions around the 11 demo projects. Most visible seen around the Belgium project in Houtvenne, where Antwerp region as a follow-up initiative has financed a training centre for promoting low-energy technologies and awareness rising. And around the Austrian project in Radstadt, where Salzburg region has adopted the demonstrated new technologies as kind of minimum recommended standards for future low-energy building strategies. Also to mention the Pierti School demo project in Kuopio, Finland, which has formed general standard for other school renovation or new-built projects, and introduced environmental education as a permanent component on school education programmes.
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Appliances
: Architects/Architecture
: Buildings
: Citizens
: Cooling
: Decision Makers
: District Heating
: Energy Efficiency
: Engineering Organisations
: Heat/Heating
: Households
: Lighting
: Local Government
: ManagEnergy
: New Buildings
: Photovoltaics
: Polygeneration
: Property Owners
: Refurbishment of Buildings
: Regional Government
: Schools & Colleges
: Solar Thermal
: Sustainable Communities
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Case Study (170 Kb PDF)