Shout out ... ... to all innovators, idea finders, programming enthusiasts, designers and students! Join us on 4-5 November for our  innovation hackathon – build(ing) on data , as part of the "Energiesprong Lab“, the think tank to transition existing building into buildings that no longer use fossil fuels. Spend two days working with international cross-industry teams to develop a tool to map any building remotely, by smartly combining existing data sources and new technologies. Help us build a world that converts buildings faster, cheaper, and more easily into net zero energy buildings. In addition to gaining wide brand awareness and the opportunity to present to one of the largest building owners in Germany, the winning team will also receive an award of €2,500. 2-day online hackathon The Energiesprong objective is to redesign retrofit processes so that buildings no longer use fossil fuels, at a lower cost, with high quality and prefabricated elements. To accelerate this development, we have launched the Energiesprong Lab: Over the course of a two-day online hackathon, contribute with your creative ideas - as a team or as an individual - on the topic of optimising building data and work digitally on an exciting new challenge. CHALLENGE:  Innovation hackathon – build(ing) on data We're looking for the best ideas for a tool that can map a building by bringing together publicly-available data and existing data. In this way, we can obtain a good picture of the inside and outside of a building, so that providers of net zero energy retrofits can better and more easily tailor their offer to the customer’s requirements. This is a step on the way to developing a plug-and-play net zero retrofit concept, taking into account the specific design requirements of each customer! Why participate You will gain access to a free online 2-day hackathon on 4 and 5 November You will have the opportunity to present your idea to one of the largest building owners in Germany You will gain access and be connected to the national and international  Energiesprong eco-system The winning team of the hackathon will Win prize money of €2,500 Get the opportunity to present their concept idea on a big stage in front of other relevant national and international stakeholders Receive coaching and have access to a meeting room in Berlin to further develop the concept. It’s worth it, so why not join in! When From Thursday 4 th  November to Friday 5 th  November, you will have 36 hours to work on your idea. Our coaches will be available to offer support and mentoring. Where You will work virtually from your own home. We will send you further information upon registration. Register before October 23! Language Please note that the hackathon will take place in English for the German market. We are inviting anyone and everyone who is interested to join us! The webpage is German, but don't let that deter you from registering. We answer in English. If you are curious, but not sure if your idea/concept is suitable, please feel free to contact us for a preliminary conversation at  sanne@energiesprong.org

According to the this month released U.N. Report, residential buildings are the source of around one-fifth of all greenhouse gases emitted globally. Retrofitting older homes and buildings to make them energy neutral is one of the biggest challenges. NewsHour Weekend special correspondent WillemMarx reports for PSB news ongoing series Peril and Promise: the Challenge of Climate Change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2DfPl9iy8

Listen to "Why Energiesprong could be a gamechanger for retrofit" in this episode of BBCRadio4, 39 ways, to save the planet with Tom Heap. This podcast also features insight from Energiesprong's Ron van Erck, as well as the residents benefitting. See 39 ways on BBCSounds to hear the programme in full.

A packed newsletter with our latest international developments. Did you know Energiesprong Italy was launched? You definitely want to watch the video of the first completed project in Germany and get your updates from New York. Ready? Click here and enjoy your read.

Mustbe0 projects is all about apartments buildings, so let's check out a realised high-rise project. Housing organisation Portaal with construction company Dura Vermeer After completion of successful net zero retrofits for single-family homes, Housing Organisation Portaal decided to moving on up to retrofit multi-story buildings. Together with construction company Dura Vermeer, a net zero deep retrofit for 110 apartments at the Kwangodreef, Gambiadreef and Kasaidreef in Utrecht was realised. Portaal is one of the pioneers in realising net zero energy homes and has completed hundreds of them all over the Netherlands. Together with builder Dura Vermeer, also a frontrunner in this area of expertise, they again successfully delivered these multi-story apartment buildings. While the residents were at home, window frames were renewed, facades repackaged, new ventilation systems and PV panels installed and kitchens and bathrooms replaced. Most important elements: Energy use  before  the renovation: 3.245 kWh/m3 per year Energy use  after  the renovation: 848 kWh/m3 per year Ventilation by means of balanced ventilation with a Heat Recovery Unit CO2 controlled (system D) Entire shell thermally insulated: Roof: Rc= 7 Closed façade : Rc = 6 Open façade, triple glas: U-value = 0,9 Ground floor: Rc = 4 Cooperation: Housing organisation Portaal with construction company Dura Vermeer . Click  here  for the complete photoalbum

An European initiative building an industry from scratch HotHouse, By Willem Marx The homes were terraced, pale-brown brick, and woefully energy inefficient. The two-story townhouses in Hem, a small town in the northeast of France, kept residents sweltering in the summer and shivering in the winter. Utility bills were crushing.  But ten of the townhouses were finally due for an upgrade in 2018. The private company Vilogia owned them as part of its contract with the French government to provide affordable housing, known as social housing in Europe. Vilogia owns thousands of other properties just like them across the whole of France, where lower-income tenants rent properties at below-market rates.  Even developers of new buildings have found it “impossible” to reach net-zero in France, recalls Fabien Lasserre, the company’s head of technical innovation. But he and his colleagues were preparing upgrades for the old homes in Hem that had to last decades. That presented an added risk: any improvements could become obsolete in a few years if French regulators imposed stricter residential emission standards.  Lasserre decided to try an experiment that had never been done at scale in France: a zero-carbon retrofit for old homes.  After winning approval from his CEO, Lasserre got to work. Over the course of three months, his team installed new polyurethane facades to each of the terraced houses to avoid heat loss. Above the existing roofs, they built timber and steel structures filled with insulation panels. Solar panels were installed on all the roofs. Most of these components were manufactured or assembled in a nearby factory, rather than created onsite, to save money. Heat recovery ventilation systems extracted stale and moist air from each home, recovered the heat, and then used that heat to warm fresh filtered air. The cost to upgrade each unit was around €120,000 ($145,000), slightly higher than a conventional retrofit. But energy use fell by 75%, enabling the solar panels to handle the remainder. Just as important, annual energy bills fell by half to just €900 ($1085) (most of which were outmoded energy taxes the French government is considering abolishing).  “It was a kind of revolution,” Lasserre says of the project. The upgrades ensured expensive upgrades wouldn’t be needed in the future, and tenants could be more comfortable for decades to come without having to leave their homes during refurbishments. Other large affordable housing owners in France soon took note. Three years later, Vilogia plans to deliver dozens of zero-carbon apartments and refurbish 160 single-family homes in the nearby community of Wattrelos, France. Another 800 homes are due for completion by 2025. The firm has partnered with its peers and the local government to expand this effort dramatically in the years ahead.  Replicating zero-carbon homes anywhere It can’t come soon enough:  17% of the world’s total greenhouse emissions  come from housing. Most of those aren’t from new buildings, but from existing properties. The great challenge is how to retrofit millions of buildings to meet a net-zero standard. The Dutch may have found a way.  Lasserre’s inspiration came from a business concept he had learned about from European colleagues called  Energiesprong , a Dutch word for “energy jump.” It began back in 2010 as a vague idea inside the Netherlands ministry for home affairs. An unspent portion of that year’s innovation budget, just under €50 million, needed to be allocated. It was decided the funds should be spent on reducing carbon emissions from the country’s housing sector.  Private sector individuals with a range of backgrounds pulled together in a government-funded business incubator. They brought professional expertise from housing development, energy efficiency, and marketing, according to Silicon Valley veteran Ron van Erck, who joined the effort early on and now oversees international development at the not-for-profit Energiesprong Foundation.  But it was an unconventional marriage that turned out to be exactly what the industry needed. “If we are not figuring out something that's more compelling for people to buy—that actually brings the building stock closer to where we need to go—this is going nowhere,” says van Erck, describing the Dutch government’s strategy. “This is not where we would like to end up.”  A decade after its inception, the group is now thinking about retrofitting as far more than materials. They’ve created a commercial ecosystem in the Netherlands for businesses that are willing to rethink and then tackle the necessary housing transformation. They built a dedicated factory for insulation panels, so as to drive down on-site costs; convinced banks and local governments to offer attractive financing for homeowners; and consulted tenants on the buildings’ aesthetics.  The soup-to-nuts approach means  Energiesprong  promoters - like local housing organizations - can refurbish homes that are visually desirable, with lower energy costs and carbon footprints. But  Energiesprong  is also a market development tool: a public-private model that can be replicated in developed nations seeking to reduce its carbon footprints. By building out a viable ecosystem of companies that work together to deliver zero-carbon retrofits, it scales up a service for millions of homes. Government, meet the zero-carbon home industry Almost 6,000 properties in the Netherlands have already undergone an  energiesprong  makeover. There are at least as many planned in France — including Vilogia’s efforts — plus hundreds more under construction in the UK, Germany and Italy, and even a few dozen planned for New York state through a $30 million program called RetrofitNY. So far, the concept has only worked in a small number of locations, and only with significant financial and logistical backing from government. The task ahead, UK researchers  say , means a radical change to the business models behind residential renovation, and a shift in how governments pay for it. Rather than simply paying for building upgrades, governments need to support the creation of a viable commercial industry aimed at eliminating emissions from buildings (similar to how NASA is  nurturing a commercial space flight industry , rather than just building and buying rockets).  Energiespong  aims to do this by directing funds toward early adopters of effective technologies, sourcing financial support for them until they reach commercial viability. With tens of millions of homes across North America and Europe needing to be upgraded in the coming decades, old techniques aren’t up to the challenge. There may never be enough workers to retrofit all the homes that require energy efficiency upgrades, house by house with individual surveys, argues Ian Hutchcroft, head of Energiesprong’s market expansion efforts in the UK. Instead, retrofit efforts must come to rely on the expanded use of digital tools, like portable 3-D laser scanners that can measure millions of data points on an individual property, then instruct an assembly line nearby to build bespoke insulation panels for each home.  “We need a new industry that's capable of delivering at scale in a cost-effective way,” he says. “We're very much about industrializing the housing retrofit and new-build process as well.” He points to the automobile industry as a model: thousands of customized cars a day roll off assembly lines.  Hutchcroft’s team now talks with the British government “every week” to expand the market beyond social housing groups and public sector landlords. He’s encouraged by their willingness to listen. Given the chance to present a few slides to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he thinks he could be persuasive: “I think we’ve got that compelling narrative, I think we have the pitch, and we can point to where it is working, and point to the companies that consider this to be the future.”  The ultimate goal, says Hutchcroft, is raising awareness among homeowners who demand zero-carbon retrofits. Supply will follow. “Some carrots and sticks from government,” he explains, “will drive householders to put their hands up and say, ‘Yes, please do this to my house too.'”

Do you have excellent social media and content management skills? Energiesprong EU is looking for a Social Media & Content Manager to join their team to support the Interreg NWE funded MustBe0 project. The Project: The MustBe0 project is funded by the Interreg North-West Europe Programme . The project is led by the Energiesprong Foundation and aims to provide affordable, desirable, long-term performance guaranteed net zero energy retrofits for apartment buildings in the North West Europe region following the Energiesprong approach. The award-winning Energiesprong net zero energy standard and funding approach provides modern and comfortable homes that people love to live in. In the MustBe0 project, nine housing providers in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands have committed to collaborating on retrofitting at least nine demonstrator buildings (415 apartments). This will launch the market for retrofitting multi-unit buildings in Europe. The Role: As a key member of a small team, you will be responsible for monitoring social media feeds and creating content related to the project’s activities for social media channels. Your responsibilities: Manage social media feeds: regular monitor and update social media; Create content on project news and activities for social media channels; Write articles on the demonstrator projects and related topics; Edit articles and press releases composed by the different market development teams in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands; Provide media coverage overviews of press attention regarding the project activities across Europe and further afield. Skills and Experience: Experience of managing social media feeds (Twitter & LinkedIn); Experience of creating and managing content; Excellent English language skills; Proven copywriting experience; Foreign language skills a plus; Passion or understanding of the sustainability market desirable. Terms: Location: Home or own office based. Terms: Part-time position. Flexible. 200 hours over a 12-month contract. To apply, please submit a quote to: info@energiesprong.org

Mark Douglas Wessel Whether it’s a goal of putting someone on the moon for the first time, coming up with a vaccine for COVID-19 or in the EU’s case becoming carbon neutral by 2050, announcing such admirable goals while inspiring, is the easy part. Sorting out how to get there – as mentioned previously, is where the real work begins. And such is the case with Europe’s goal of retrofitting as many as 35 million buildings over the next decade. This also helps to explain why despite its early success, Energiesprong has adopted a mindset of constant improvement with respect to everything from financial models for retrofitting, to the evolution of products and materials used to ongoing enhancements to the renovation process itself. For example, revisiting the way façades are produced – ideally at the factory level, in a manner that will make them a more desirable, more affordable choice for individual homeowners. “If you look at wraparounds for post war stock (the best candidates for this work), I think the façade component requires another step,” observes Ron van Erck, head of Energiesprong’s international market development. “They make sense for certain houses where the façade quality and insulation values are poor and it’s financially viable for housing providers to invest in this work over a 30-to-40-year period. But currently, many private homeowners will continue to think that sort of investment is going to be too steep. So, for façades, we still need another step in innovation to put a push on in the coming year.” Photo's by Olivier Samyn Knocking Down that First Domino Innovation not just in terms of how façades are produced, but the scale on which they’re made. Sébastien Delpont, director of Energiesprong France feels the key to ramping up and industrializing the retrofitting process comes down to achieving much higher production volumes, not unlike other mass-produced products or services. “There is one domino after another that we need to get down and in our view, social housing is the first domino. If I had to knock on the door of each and every homeowner to convince them to retrofit their homes, it’s going to take a lot more time (to ramp things up). So a better solution at least in the short term, to get the numbers we need, is to target social housing organizations that can deliver hundreds or even thousands of homes right from the start.” Yet another area of innovation that has become a priority is ensuring the circularity of façades and other building materials used to retrofit homes.  “We continue to work on ways to bring down the cost of retrofitting homes and such elements as the façades – which in itself, is a huge innovation. But now we have another step… and that’s ensuring as many materials as possible we use are recyclable or cradle to cradle.” Energiesprong is proud of the strides they’ve made thus far “but now we want more,” he candidly observes. “On a project-by-project basis, we’re getting more focussed on sourcing more low carbon materials. From a neighbourhood wide perspective, a critical next step is to get more private homeowners on board with energy conversions.”  Designing More, for All To accelerate building innovation tied to cost effective net zero retrofits, over the past year Energiesprong has launched design competitions on both sides of the Atlantic. In the MustBe0 Design Competition (the MustBe0 project is funded by the Interreg North-West Europe programme) launched in the UK, the central theme of ‘Build Up’ focussed on best practices for adding new layers of dwellings on existing flats, while transforming the entire building to net zero. And in a design competition in Berlin themed ‘Net Zero Now!’ the emphasis was on retrofit solutions for multi-story buildings, including the use of such essential components as roof solar panels and insulated façades. Arguably one of the most exciting aspects of this innovation drive, is they’re being made not for the profit of one company or group, but for the benefit of all players in the industry. “The thing is we are an open-source change maker,” observes Delpont. “Basically everything we’re doing is public because we’re working for local authorities and States within the EU. So it’s not a matter of supporting one specific company or cause… we’re just helping everyone because it’s in the public interest to make it easier and less expensive to do deep energy retrofits.” Knowing What the Puzzle Looks Like Energiesprong’s openness and ‘a rising tide lifts all ships’ mindset carries over into the group’s long-term objectives as well. In sharp contrast to the corporate world, where the focus is on such criteria as market share and longevity, Energiesprong’s mindset that van Erck openly admits is “we want to go away as quickly as humanly possible. Because that means the problem has been solved.” To get there, he says “we’ll continue to work with a handful of actors that make-or-break projects. The homeowners. The financier. The solution provider. And the regulator. If you can put those four into a room and make them understand what they must do… then a very real opportunity to bring about change emerges. I don’t think anyone else is going about it in that way,” he says, adding “it helps if you know where you want to go. Because I think a lot of people look at just one piece of the puzzle, before knowing what the completed puzzle looks like in the end.”

Mark Douglas Wessel In principle, the idea of retrofitting homes to net zero sounds appealing enough. But the cost of implementing deep energy upgrades that might cost 45-60,000 Euro per home has long been a non-starter whether you’re an individual homeowner at one end of the scale… or manage thousands of rental units at the other. At either end of the spectrum, the potential long-term energy savings are often trumped by the up-front costs. Historically, the home renovation industry has taken somewhat of piecemeal, reactive approach to home renovations, tackling everything from small jobs like replacing a door or window to larger projects like putting on a new roof, based on the short-term needs (e.g., you can’t close the window; the roof is leaky). But Energiesprong’s Sanne De Wit (who bears the creative title ‘head of ideas’), says that particularly with housing developments, this ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ approach has been made worse by awarding jobs to the lowest bidder, especially if it means using substandard products. Furthermore, this process has done little to incentivize product innovation within the housing sector.  Going from One-offs to Whole House Retrofits In response to these challenges, Energiesprong has created a long-term whole house retrofit program, that gets homes to net zero and includes an unprecedented 30-year warranty for the work that’s done. All of this is paid for by an innovative financial model that’s made more unique by the fact that no subsidies are involved. One way of going about this as De Wit explains, is that “instead of the tenant paying the utility company, you set it up so that they make their payments to their housing corporation. And if they do that for 30 years… then you might have the equivalent of 30-40,000 Euros to invest toward getting that unit to net zero. And then if you add in the maintenance budget which you have to spend anyway to keep a house liveable (whether it’s a renovation when you buy a house, or a replacement of roofs and windows every 30-40 years housing organisations do), that gets you to 60k per house, suddenly you have a business case to go to market with.” From there, by providing a 30-year warranty on the work to be done, it provides the housing organization with the ability to procure the necessary up-front financing. Photo by Bureau Door Piloting the Way to Net Zero Putting words into action, Energiesprong in partnership with site owner Arsago Group and the City of Hameln are responsible for Germany’s first multi-family retrofit to net zero, using prefabricated roof and façade elements, insulation, solar photovoltaic systems and heat pumps. And at another site in Utrecht, Netherlands, Energiesprong in partnership with the Housing Organisation Mitros, initially transformed eight homes to net zero, which paved the way for similar retrofits to an additional 252 apartments and 15 homes. Beyond the energy upgrades, which for the Utrecht homes translated into a drop in energy usage from 225 kWh/m2 down to 50 kWh/m2 per year, quality of living renovations included new kitchens, bathrooms and new interior paintwork. The rationale behind these ‘extras’ as De Wit explains is “we’re not approaching the projects from just a technical/climate point of view. It’s much more than that. This is an opportunity to really rethink how people live and creating homes residents can be proud of.” Energiesprong’s Sébastien Delpont says the social aspect of these retrofits is just as important as the energy savings, particularly for public housing projects.  Upon completion “they don’t look like social housing anymore,” he observes. “So it changes how people are perceived in the community.” And ultimately, the mark of a good social housing retrofit, is “one where you cannot tell that it’s social housing… you just see quality that helps to (positively) change the face of the neighbourhood.” Putting People in the Process Yet another key consideration in the retrofit process is to rethink how the work is done to minimize the inconvenience that residents ultimately bear the brunt of. “It’s not good enough to just say ‘hey we have something great for you’, without recognizing from the start that it’s going to be pretty disruptive for these people,” observes De Wit. “It’s also critical that we listen to their concerns, such as addressing such fundamental quality of living challenges as cold, leaky buildings, excessive moisture and noise due to lack of proper insulation. Getting the resident’s perspective is something we never really did in the past – especially with social housing refurbishments.” Putting themselves in the shoes of these residents, the approach of Energiesprong and its builder and supplier partners, is to fast-track the retrofit process as much as possible, from prefabricating exterior roofs and facades offsite that can be installed more quickly than onsite construction, to embracing best practices to streamline the retrofit process. For example, worker bodycams are sometimes used to monitor and analyze how to speed up the process and these findings are then deployed for future projects. If there is a common thread to all of this, it’s that from one project to the next Energiesprong is doing its part to create more livable, more energy efficient homes and neighbourhoods, while serving as a catalyst for change in the building sector. To get there, Delpont says the industry needs to continue to attract innovators who are willing to work together to develop new applications and breakthroughs in technology. But he wonders aloud “can we make retrofits attractive and challenging enough that engineers see that the future of technology is in creating more sustainable homes versus building the next racing car?” And at the same time “can we convince members of the public to want to have a more efficient home versus wanting to buy a bigger car?” Ultimately, Delpont says whether it’s attracting industry innovators or creating a groundswell of end user demand, “in many ways it comes down to a battle of the battle for people’s hearts and minds.”

Let us take you back to this net zero energy renovation concept for stacked construction by Dura Vermeer that has won the Sustainable Building Award. Commissioned by housing organisation Lefier, Dura Vermeer in Groningen has renovated two blocks of terraced houses from the 1960s to net zero energy: 24 homes on the Voermanstraat and 24 homes on the Pleiadenlaan. They are the first apartment buildings houses in the Netherlands that have been improved in this way. A unique project! More comfortable living conditions for the same money The tenants now live in a sustainable, comfortable, well-insulated house. A big advantage is that the housing costs do not increase with constant use. From now on, the amount that the tenant normally spends on energy consumption will be paid partly to the housing association and partly to his energy supplier. Partly because of this, Lefier can pay for such a major renovation on the house. Home interventions A large number of measures have been taken to make the homes energy neutral. The most drastic thing is that the house is completely "wrapped up". This means that a completely new front and rear facade has been placed in front of the existing facade. These new facade elements are fully equipped with wooden frames and brick slips. There is triple glazing in the frames. To bear the weight of the extra facade, new foundation beams have been installed around the entire complex. The balcony at the rear of the house has been closed to create an interior balcony. New, insulated roof plates, fitted with solar panels, have been installed on the roof. A new entrance patio with mailbox and awning has also been installed. Since the renovation, the houses no longer have a gas connection. Solar panels provide the energy. Most important elements: Frames with triple glazing 40 year performance guarantee Insulating roof plates containing solar panels A solar water heater New entrance patio with mailbox and awning Balconies are closed with sliding windows so that the balconies can also be 'closed' for extra insulation. 24 solar panels per household, with an annual yield of approximately 6,800 kWh The air capacity of this heat recovery unit is 210 m³ per hour at 200 Pa the RC value is on average 7 Residents could enjoy a renovated home within 10 working days Cooperation: Dura Vermeer Lefier Click here for the complete photoalbum

Mark Douglas Wessel By Retrofitting the Way We Think About Renovating Homes Looking back on 2020, despite COVID-19 there were some positive storylines… among them, the fact that the European Union declared the ambitious goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050. And as a steppingstone in that direction, the EU also announced that it intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2030. Having drawn a proverbial line in the sand, the unavoidable question facing the EU now is: how do you make the jump from setting lofty goals to actually achieving them? Making Waves To some extent, the European Commission has already begun to answer that question with its Renovation Wave Strategy of doubling renovation rates over the next decade. The motivation for ramping up building retrofits has been driven by numbers that are impossible to ignore: buildings in the EU account for 40 percent of energy consumption and 26 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. So even if Europe were to put a big push on converting its coal fired plants to wind turbines and other alternative energy sources… without taking bold steps to make buildings significantly more energy efficient, the continent would still fall well short of its GHG reduction goals. As stated on the New Europe website , the benefits to be realised by transforming existing housing stock into energy efficient homes are far reaching… starting with a significant reduction in greenhouse gases. But also, improved quality of living for residents – many of whom are living in housing that has undergone minimal upgrades in the post-war era. And the cumulative effect of doubling the current renovation pace could translate into as many as 35 million buildings being renovated and an additional 165,000 green jobs created in the housing sector in 10 years’ time. But as with any goal that sounds good on paper: what are the actual steps needed to get there? Transitioning from Why to How “The need to retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient and comfortable to live in is something that everybody gets. But people never talk about how you’re going to do (these retrofits), they think it’s naturally going to happen,” observes Sébastien Delpont, Director of Energiesprong France. So the overarching question he says “is not so much about why, but how” the EU is going to achieve its potentially world leading renovation targets. It’s a challenge Energiesprong , an international movement (with projects now in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, the U.S. and Canada) has been grappling with since its inception eight years ago. The group has come up with the ambitious goal of transforming neighbourhoods around the world into more energy efficient, more liveable communities, factoring in everything from e-mobility to energy infrastructure to social innovation. One of their more forward-thinking innovations has been to use modern digital and manufacturing technologies to produce energy efficient building façades and roofs in a factory setting. The pre-construction process involves using drones equipped with cameras and 3D modelling software to digitally measure existing building stock, producing new exteriors that cover the old ones to within a millimetre of accuracy. Thanks to the degree of precision involved, the façades and roofs can then be quickly and seamlessly installed in participating residential projects. Thus far, Energiesprong’s approach has dramatically transformed thousands of homes in Europe, however the group’s challenge mirrors that of the EU’s Renovation Wave Strategy itself: how do you go from thousands to potentially millions of retrofits, and do so as quickly and efficiently as possible? On closer inspection there are multiple barriers to achieving this goal; however, none of them appear to be insurmountable. Top of mind with Delpont is “we need to be more industrial and more efficient” with respect to home energy retrofits. And based on current projects “we’re not yet to the level where we are operating like a factory. In an ideal world, we need to get to 2,000 energy retrofits a day to achieve (the EU’s) climate goal. We’re heading in the right direction, but not fast enough.” By ‘right direction’ Delpont is referencing the fact that such previously mentioned innovations as prefabricated façades lend themselves well to offsite, mass production in factories in each participating market, not unlike the automotive industry. That said, in contrast to the auto industry and most other sectors, from his own experience in countries like France “the housing industry is one part of the economy that hasn’t realised any significant jumps in efficiency since the 90’s… so there’s a lot of room for improvement.” Incentivising Change So how then does the building sector miraculously transform its current model of localised onsite construction to a more ambitious, factory oriented one, not unlike the way Ford Motor company transformed the automotive industry over 100 years ago with the introduction of assembly lines? To help make this happen, Ron van Erck, Head of Energiesprong’s international market development is convinced the EU must match its ambitious targets with equally aggressive financial incentives. “I think it’s clear there needs to be an agreement where (EU) member states understand that the building sector is a huge part of the problem and that they need to bring forward a roadmap together with some form of stimulus package,” he observed. “And for retrofits, higher standards need to be achieved, because it’s much better to incentivise one net zero retrofit than three that only reduce fossil fuel consumption by 20 or 30 percent with the same total support budget.” Based on multiple precedents, van Erck says there remains a very real challenge of member states getting into a potential tug of war over which energy standards to adopt and incentivise… and one way to avoid getting bogged down, is to take the same approach as the EU with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions: establish clearly defined goals and timelines.  “I think member states should think in terms of the carbon savings they want to realise from building stock over the next 30 years… as an end goal… and then the milestones or steps needed to get them there. So maybe it works out to be a 20 percent reduction by 2030, 40 percent by 2040 and maybe even as high as 90 percent by 2050.” Through that sort of staged approach member states can come to terms with which standards, practices and innovations are needed to help get them there. What you want to avoid van Erck says, is falling into the trap of starting off with lower standards and then five or 10 years down the road, “realising that you should have done it differently… that you should have had more ambitious targets. Because once you’ve reached that point there’s no turning back and you can’t just stack more measures onto that building to get to a higher performance. So you’ve wasted a lot of money, without achieving your end goal in the process.”

After a successful first season in 2020, on 11 March 2021 the Energiesprong France team are launching the second season of their Innovation Competition, co-financed by the CEE Energiesprong France project. The objective: to support the development of innovative solutions, which are cheaper in terms of overall costs, in order to democratise access to guaranteed net zero energy retrofits. Energiesprong: an approach which aims to scale-up guaranteed net zero energy retrofits.   Energiesprong has been implemented in France for just over 5 years by GreenFlex. The Energiesprong approach aims to speed up the development of guaranteed net zero energy retrofits using pre-fabricated and industrialised elements.  Energiesprong France implemented three successful pilot projects in regions across France in 2018-2019 and plans to extend the programme further with the retrofitting of 4,000 dwellings owned by social housing providers using the Energiesprong approach (from the planning phase right up to the construction phase). Several other projects are currently under consideration and Energiesprong renovation projects involving educational buildings are currently being developed. A competition open to all   Energiesprong’s Season 1 Innovation Competition aimed to develop innovative solutions in the 3 broad categories of solutions which were essential to industrialising and accelerating guaranteed net zero energy renovation (individual houses AND multi-unit apartment buildings):   Integrated energy modules Insulated roofs with energy production Prefabricated insulated façades Season 2 aims to support the development of other types of solutions , but still with a view to accelerating the scaling-up of guaranteed net zero renovations:  Improve the integration of solutions in individual houses,  through the development of complete renovation solutions which enable implementation in record time and at a reasonable cost  Optimise the ability of residents in apartment buildings to develop new energy consumption habits : energy management, flexibility, self-consumption, etc. Develop solutions for high-performance, integrated, insulated façades  at a reasonable price so that educational buildings can become more energy efficient whilst still maintaining the best conditions for students to learn. We are confident that multi-disciplinary teams, which integrate a variety of complementary skills, will be able to develop the solutions needed.  Note: If you missed, or simply want to review or share, the results of the Season 1 Innovation Competition and (re)discover the different winners announced at the Innovation Forum in September 2020, please click HERE . Launch programme and how to participate    Join us on  Thursday 11 March, 9:00-12:00,  for the launch of the 2 nd Innovation Competition (webinar format). To participate, you need to register using the following link:   REGISTRATION LINK .  (After registering, you will receive an automatic reply by email with the webinar link. Please note that places are limited). The launch programme:  A word of introduction:  a recap of Energiesprong’s aims and ambitions and the objective of the 2 nd round of the Energiesprong Innovation Competition Report on the results of the Season 1 Innovation Competition with different winners from the first round sharing their experiences and giving their feedback on the programme Presentation on the arrangements for Season 2 of the Innovation Competition : outline of the competition categories, application process for groups, agenda and key stages Question and Answer session  to answer all your questions! For those who cannot attend or who are too late to register, the practical arrangements will be published on Energiesprong.fr the day after the event.