Meet the Partners: Albertlsund Municipality
Albertslund is a growing town with about 28,000 inhabitants, located 15 km West of Copenhagen. More than 60 percent of the housing stock in the municipality consists of houses and apartments for rent, owned by non-profit social housing companies. With support from the National Building Foundation, these rental houses are currently being thoroughly refurbished and updated from the 1960’s norm to the present low energy standard. However, homeowners of houses built at the same time, with a comparable building envelope and equivalent ‘wear and tear’, do not have access to the same professional consultants, funding opportunities or equally cheap loans for their renovation projects. Therefore, the Municipality of Albertslund has a special focus on supporting the private house owners in their region.
The same but different
A large percentage of the privately owned homes in Albertslund are terraced houses. Within one housing area, hundreds of uniform houses were built in continuous rows by the one developer. All provide the same challenges, all have the same possibilities. There are often clear advantages to refurbishing a whole block at the same time, rather than doing this house by house. It is less costly and the result is aesthetically more pleasing – and with fewer thermal bridges. However, in any block of six terraced houses, for example, the owners might be at very different stages of their lives and thus have different motivations in terms of whether or not to renovate.
New district heating strategy
A new strategy has been agreed for the development of a district heating supply for Albertslund – with a goal to lowering the DH temperature to 60 degrees by 2026. It is now key to develop tools for convincing private house owners to refurbish their homes.
Joint development & testing
Albertslund has joined the Stronghouse project to cooperate in developing and testing new ways to raise awareness amongst homeowners - and to convince them of the benefits of energy renovation. One way to do this is by carrying out retrofitting projects with a neighbourhood approach. Other partners in Stronghouse, for example the Municpality of Noordenveld, have a lot of experience with this approach.
Following the first (online) workshops to create personas, design customer journeys and end-user approaches, it is clear that there are multiple opportunities for the Stronghouse consortium to learn from each other.
Visit the website of Albertslund Municipality: https://albertslund.dk/servicemenu/english/
