This is how we renovate 22 million homes in the North Sea Region

The construction industry is a very conservative business sector which has not changed much in the last decades. By failing to develop, the industry has not been able to speed up home energy renovation despite pressing needs. In addition, costs of energy renovation are rising continuously. 

The need for energy savings has never been more urgent, with energy prices skyrocketing. At the moment many families are facing energy poverty. Sadly, this number is growing rapidly.

This is why new industrial solutions for energy renovation are essential.

"This is impossible," you might think. Normally this takes weeks or months! INDU-ZERO worked with the Dutch housing association Domijn in Enschede to demonstrate how it would work in practice. Three existing houses were retrofitted using concepts developed by INDU-ZERO and the project partners RC Panels and buro de Haan. These pilot houses can be retrofitted  in the Future in no more than 3 days. And the residents can even stay at home during the renovation work.

The INDU-ZERO project may be over, but the journey does not stop here. One clear sign of that is the strong support by the European Commission for the Smart Renovation Factory concept. At our final conference, Head of Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, Diderick Samson and the Dutch MEP Mohammed Chahim both expressed their support for INDU-ZERO in video messages. 

The next challenge is to build the first real factory. Even with a fully-fledged concept and a compelling business case, many barriers need to be overcome.

During the project, a dealmaker’s group with German and Dutch industries came together in order to discuss how to realise the first factory. And since the project closed last year, I have been invited to Brussels several times to talk to the European Commission's departments for energy and growth, DG ENER and DG GROW, about how to promote the INDU-ZERO factory blueprint. Also, the European Alliance of Companies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, EuroACE, is engaging in this process.

On a smaller scale, INDU-ZERO brought forward energy efficiency product innovation. One example are windowpanes that are both super thin, super durable, and super insulating, with a low CO2 footprint and 100% recyclable. The new product, Viduci, is already launched on the market.

Linda Sjerps-Koomen, manager of business development at Rc panels, says: “Geopolitics, energy poverty and climate change all require us to step forward. The partners in INDU-ZERO did so. Products are here and we are ready to scale up. A growing number of housing companies are now joining this challenge. It can be done, it needs to be done, and we need to sit next to each other at the same side of the table, helping to speed up the processes.” 

Interested in details about the factory, such as logistics or the business case calculations?  

If you would like to talk to the people behind the project, feel free to contact project manager Ulla-Britt Krämer at ub.kraemer@overijssel.nl, phone +31 38 499 7596.

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Ulla-Britt Krämer is a project leader at the Province of Overijssel, where she has been working since 2009. She holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bremen in Germany.

She has international work experience in both the private and public sectors and currently leads the European projects within the building sector.