The development of local long term renovation strategies in Flanders

Panel: 7. Policies and programmes for better buildings

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Matteus Arinaga, VEKA – Flemish Energy and Climate Agency, Belgium
Kelly Cautreels, Sweco Belgium, Belgium

Abstract

Between November 2020 and August 2021 and in collaboration with eight pilot municipalities, the LIFE project “Belgium Renovates for Energy Efficient Living!” (BE REEL!) worked together with the company BUUR Part of Sweco (BUUR PoS) to develop general guidelines to support municipalities in Flanders (Belgium) to develop drafts for their own local long term renovation strategies (LLTRS). Besides these guidelines, they also developed eight inspirational roadmaps with the pilot municipalities to support thae development of their LLTRS. To ensure maximal diversity in the different cases, the pilot municipalities range from mid-sized and larger municipalities to towns and larger cities. This paper summarizes the key findings of the development process for governments and other organizations seeking to develop similar strategies.

This collaboration was a process consisting of multiple cocreation phases ranging from desktop research and surveys with local authorities, through in-depth interviews and workshops, to the development of the final output and lessons learned. In tandem with BUUR PoS’s co-creative process, a visualization and monitoring tool was developed by Climact, an engineering consultancy firm, to support the development of the LLTRS with robust data and clear information. This tool served to map out and clearly indicate the zones with maximal energy reduction potential within a municipality’s building stock. At the end of the co-creation process, each municipality received general guidelines, a specific draft roadmap for their municipality, data from the tool about their building stock, and a list of possible measures.