Eco-Life Site Kortrijk
The ECO-Life demonstration site in Belgium is in Kortrijk, a city located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The wider municipality comprises the city of Kortrijk and the seven surrounding towns with a total of 74 700 inhabitants, which makes it the seventh largest city in the Flemish region.
A large number of the housing units in Kortrijk date from before 1960. They are not adapted to changed living standards, or to higher energy standards. In striving for innovation and a higher quality of life for residents, the Council of Kortrijk decided to improve the building stock through refurbishment and new construction.
*The KPIs for the new building are compared with the baseline of a reference building.
An overall area of 24 700 m2 was included in the ECO-Life project in Kortrijk. As a result of the energy efficiency, the monitored yearly energy balance was found to be 117 kWh/m²/yr on average. This amounts to 1127 MWh of final energy saved every year.
On the supply side, the following production of renewable energy has been achieved:
- Photovoltaicss: 210 MWh/yr
- Heat pump: 163 MWh/yr
- Biomass plant: 1346 MWh/yr
According to the primary energy and CO2 factors provided by the project and the SCIS database, the primary energy savings go up to 5463 MWh/yr, which is 70 % of the primary energy used in the reference situation. The intervention within ECO-Life yielded 464 tonnes/yr CO2 savings under full operation (40 % in comparison to national regulations). Additionally, 346 tonnes of CO2 have been displaced by the savings from the renewable energy system.
There was a mismatch between design values and monitored values. This was mainly due to high network heat losses in district and collective heating networks, low production efficiencies, and higher energy demand for space heating in some demonstration buildings.
The following interventions were implemented in Kortrijk as part of the ECO-Life project:
Energy efficiency in buildings
- Retrofitting the building envelope:
- The demonstration buildings in the Venning district replaced a neighbourhood of single-family social houses built in the 1950s. Some of the houses were demolished, while others were renovated to meet higher standards.
- Building integrated renewable energy sources
- Photovoltaics
Energy systems integration
- Biomass boiler
- District heating
- The main heating generation system in the Venning district is a biomass boiler with a capacity of 950 kWth.
The total investment costs for the interventions in Kortrijk are EUR 4 million. This includes costs for building refurbishment, building integrated renewable energy systems and energy systems integration.
The reduction of fuel costs is calculated by comparing the heat costs of the households with the heat use (for space heating and domestic hot water) of a reference building that complies with Flemish energy standards for new buildings in 2010. With such a comparison, ECO-Life calculated that the reduction of fuel costs in the ECO-Life dwellings is significant – more than EUR 450/year for an average household.
The simple payback times found in the cost analysis show a large variation between the buildings included in the demonstration site, ranging from 10 to 73 years. When EU grants are considered, the payback drops to 9 for the lowest and 33 years for the highest.
The simple payback time for the total photovoltaic and heat pump system is 1 year with the EU grant and 12 years without the grant. The heat pump shows 1 year of payback compared to a reference system (in this case a condensing boiler).
All demonstration projects are defined in a "Whole Community Approach" which means that all project initiatives are considered as integrated components. The aim is to ensure optimal interaction and balance of the energy demand and energy supply at all times.
- Estimated population involved: 1.200
- Approx. geographical area coverage: Information will follow
- Approx. energy saving (in %): Information will follow
- Approx. energy from RES (in %): Information will follow