The EU Renovation Lunches are a new online format, which brings together municipalities, local and regional authorities and stakeholders from all over the EU. It provides an open and informal space to exchange about best practices, learnings and difficulties in implementing renovation but also to find partners for cooperation and support.

June, 28, 2023 | see presentation

The EU aims at an annual 3% renovation rate of buildings. However, we are far away from a Renovation Wave as the current renovation rate is roughly at 1%. Building renovations decrease energy consumption while reducing energy poverty and at the same time mitigating CO2-emissions to reach the EU climate targets. Municipalities and regions play a major role in facilitating building renovations. Unfortunately, financial questions often pose obstacles to renovation activities. Effective and easy financing models are needed.

The Rhodoshop project from Bulgaria represents such an example. In the first Online Renovation Lunch, Zlatka Nikolova from the Association of Rhodope Municipalities and Ivanka Pandelieva-Dimova from the Sofia Energy Center exchanged insights, successes, challenges and insights about the Rhodoshop project to introduce a one-stop shop (OSS) for energy renovation of buildings. OSS offers integrated renovation solutions with the main aim of simplifying the building renovation process for the property owners. It is intended to accelerate building renovations by informing, motivating and supporting building owners throughout the energy renovation process. In addition, OSS can facilitate access to financing, occasionally offer better interest rates and also improve the average depth of renovation in terms of energy performance.

February 20, 2024 | see presentation

In the second edition of the Online Renovation Lunch, Alessio Colombo, CEO and Cofounder of CLEVER Cities project shared insights, successes, challenges and learnings of  his project and its sustainable material use. The CLEVER Cities project has retrofitted four towers of social housing owned by the Lombardy region, public residential buildings. Their entire facades were renovated using rice husks. Allessio Colombo gave the participants insights into how the use of rice husk was a solution regarding sustainability issues as well as into the challenge regarding financing.

June 13, 2024 | see presentations

The third and final informal online Renovation Lunch was dedicated to the Energiesprong concept.  Energiesprong is a concept for the energy renovation of buildings that promises fast implementation, cost reduction and sustainability. After a renovation with Energiesprong, a building is a net zero energy building, i.e. it generates all the energy needed for its heating, hot water and electrical appliances itself. This can be achieved through the use of innovative technologies such as prefabricated façades, insulated rooftops with solar panels and smart heating and/or ventilation and cooling systems. A complete home renovation can be completed in less than 10 days, and in some projects, in just one day. In Europe, the Energiesprong concept is being implemented in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and the UK. 

At the third Renovation Lunch, Sanne de Wit, Head of Ideas at the Global Energiesprong Alliance, and Timo Sengewald, Senior Expert for Climate-Neutral Buildings at the German Energy Agency (dena), exchanged experiences with the implementation of the Energiesprong concept in the Netherlands and Germany. Both countries follow different approaches in applying this concept: while in the Netherlands it is applied to the renovation of residential buildings, in Germany it is used to the renovation of non-residential buildings instead.

May, 10th, 2023 | Online |

During the online workshop, participating municipalities were introduced to the SURF project, the policies and goals for sustainable renovations at EU level, and the idea and importance of sustainable renovations. The municipality of Steyerberg (Germany) shared their best practice experience of sustainable renovation. In the second part of the workshop, the results of the participating municipalities’ discussion revealed that several participants still have little knowledge about sustainable and especially circular renovation of buildings. The discussion showed that sustainable renovations in Romania, Hungary and Germany face the following obstacles: (1) financial challenges, (2) lack of knowledge about sustainable materials, (3) lack of specific legislation on green public procurement and (4) acceptance of the costs of life cycle assessment. Most of these know-how-based barriers will be addressed through the capacity building activities of the SURF project.

Here you can read the presentation of the municipality of Steyerberg and the DUH presentation on the project.

 

(Copyright: DUH)

During the workshop, the local staff from municipalities in Hungary, Rumania, and Germany visited best practice projects in Luckenwalde and Berlin (Germany). Luckenwalde managed to energetically refurbish residential buildings and seized the opportunity to connect the buildings to the local district heating at once due to successful cooperation between the urban planning office and other municipal administration and utilities.

• Participants had the opportunity to visit the implemented measures such as an old apartment block building that has been energetically renovated to a low energy building ensuring a low rent, an energetically renovated library that formerly was a station hall as well as several energetically renovated residential districts and a renovated school heated by a hybrid geothermal heat pump. 

Left: photography of the group in front of the energetically renovated education institute that was extended by a new annex building (Copyright: DUH)/Right: the building as such (Copyright: DUH)

• On the third and last day, participants had the opportunity to visit the Circular House in Berlin, a former industrial building that has been reconverted and sustainably renovated into a living and office space. An expert from the Urban Mining Hub Berlin, Wilhelm Unnerstall, highlighted the sustainable renovation features, which led to an inspiring exchange amongst the participants.

  

Left: tour in the circular house (Copyright: DUH)/Right: house "Alltag" (Copyright: DUH)

• “Alltag”, the building, offering flats and spaces for work and social occasions, is partially constructed with a timber structure. The tall windows in the staircase could be saved from a building that was demolished. The building envelope is conform to the standard of a passive house.

The immersion into the best practice examples in combination with the knowledge transfer that inspired the participants not only in a cognitive but also in a holistic way. The presentation about the energetic renovation of a whole district, for example, inspired them, but was not as highlighted by them as was the experience of actually being in a converted building, renovated with sustainable material made them combine the newly gained knowledge with a positive experience. 

Workshops:

Additionally, participants exchanged their experiences in four workshops that were geared to each other. They analysed relevant municipal processes, challenges and stakeholders in the context of sustainable building renovation (SBR) in order to identify leverage points for improvements in and acceleration of SBR processes. 

(Copyright: DUH)

The participating municipal staff was very happy with the exchange. They highlighted the inspiration they got by the selected best practices and that they would use in their hometowns.

November 28th | Online |

At the third and final international peer-to-peer workshop, the German municipality of Krefeld shared its approach to green public procurement for construction and renovation projects.

In 2021, Krefeld set a target to become climate-neutral by 2035. That same year, the Central Building Management introduced the "Planning Instructions for Municipal Properties," with an appendix on "Sustainable Construction." These instructions outline sustainability goals across environmental, economic, and health aspects, and provide specific measures for renovating or constructing municipal buildings. All renovation and construction projects must adhere to these instructions, which means procurement documents must also integrate sustainability criteria to ensure compliance.

Rachid Jaghou, Head of Krefeld's Central Building Management, highlighted two exemplary projects: the Weidenröschenweg daycare center, completed in August 2023, and the Ritterstraße daycare center, currently under construction. In both cases, sustainable construction standards were fully integrated into the tendering process.

Here you can find the presentation from the city of Krefeld.