Sustainable financing for energy efficient building (AG3)

Summary

Efficient use of energy in buildings is an actual topic with respect to architecture and technical equipment of buildings. Financing of high thermal performance components for the building envelope and especially Passive Houses is a quite new field for most people acting on the building market.
We want to discuss here the chance of energy efficient and sustainable building design for all actors: customers, architects and planers, and last but not least the financing people. For this reason we invite here banking people and decision makers from real estate companies.
The discussion will show that all people involved in constructing buildings can get sustainable benefits from the use of sustainable conceptions: the customers by lower total costs for their buildings , the financiers and the national economy and last bur not least our environmet we live in.

Short presentations

The Passive House - the state of the art
on an economic point of view
Berthold Kaufmann from Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt will give a short review about the development of passive houses. The economic point of view and cost calculation aspects will be covered in detail. Most of the high thermal performance components used in passive houses are meanwhile available on the market for moderate extra costs compared to standard solutions. The running costs resulting from energy consumption during the lifetime of the building can be significantly decreased. Doing total cost calculations will show that there result significant financial advantages in using energy efficient building design.

Financing for sustainability - challenges and strategies

Are Rødsjø from the Norwegian State Housing Bank will explain the activities of his Institute and the motivation behind this. The Norwegian State Housing Bank is an Institution comparable to the Germman 'Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Are Rødsjø is participating as a representative of his Institute at IEA Task 28 'Solar Sustainable Housing' of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The main focus for The Norwegian State Housing bank's work in Task 28 is: Which are the best strategies to create increased supply and demand for sustainable housing? How will this affect the Housing Bank's role and work towards the municipalities, the building sector and the market in general?
Comparing running costs with the investment costs of a buildung will become really necessary in times where energy costs will rise and rise. Both costs have to be viewed together to get the right answer to the question: what's to be done next... Sustainability is defined in this context with respect to energy, building material, but as well as with respect to limited financial resources.
The conclusion with respect to economic decisions is therefore: People who build sustainable houses today will be able to afford the financial charge even in the future. The financial risk for the bank is therefore lower than if the building is constructed with conventional techniques.

Advantages for financing sustainable building desingn by the UmweltBank

Günter Engelhard from the UmweltBank AG in Nürnberg will explain the policy of his Institute in the field of construction finance. The UmweltBank AG includes a sustainable management of their customers into the risc evaluation of credits. One point of this is to prefer energy efficient and ecologic building design by decreasing the annual interest rate for those projects by 0,5 percent points. The products of the german KfW-Bank which are subsidized by the government are part of the credits offered by the UmweltBank. Apart the new construction of buildings the refurbishment of old buildings is a large part (36 %) of the financial volume of the Bank.

Panel Discussion

After the presentations the subject will be discussed on the panel and anwers will be given to questions or remarks from the audience. Besides the speakers three additional persons will be present on the panel who are introduced below.

Moderation:

Helmut Krapmeier, Energieinstitut Vorarlberg, Dornbirn, Austria. Helmut Krapmeier is the leader of the section 'Solar Architecture' at Energieinstitut Vorarlberg. He was involved deeply in the construction of the first passive houses in Vorarlberg. He is member of the scientific committee of the 9. Passive House Conference 2005. At all former Passive House Conferences and many other symposia he was a well known speaker with ever enthousiastic audience.

Further persons on the panel:

Detlef Tuttlies, GAG Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Aktiengesellschaft für Wohnungs- Gewerbe- und Städtebau. Herr Detlef Tuttlies is since more than 35 years involved in housing industriy, the last 18 years he was member of the board of management of several housing companies.
Since 2003 he is member of the board of the GAG Ludwigshafen, the largest municipal housing company in Rheinland-Pfalz. The development of GAG to a powerful and customer oriented company is one of his most important goals. The sustainable development of the building stock by energy efficient modernisation of buildings most erected in the 1950 to 60ies and the development of the town of Ludwigshafen, especially the banks of the river rhine are his main tasks for the near future. The new construction of an office building with passive house technology is another ambituous project of the GAG.
One of the actual refurbishment projects of the GAG is a 'Passive House in the stock of renal flats' a building erected in 1960 which will be equipped with high thermal performance components. This building will reach the passive house criteria. Andre Zaman of the GAG will present this project on Friday 17:50. For details, see the program of the conference.
Andrea Berndgen-Kaiser, Institut für Landes- und Stadtentwicklungsforschung und Bauwesen des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (ILS NRW), Aachen, Germany.

Andrea Berndgen Kaiser at ILS is in charge with the subsidies for passive houses of the federal government of Nordrhein Westfalen. The passive house standard and the so called 3-Liter standard within the "50 solar-cities" is subsidized as actions of the climate protection conception for NRW in the framework of the REN-program (rational energy use and use of renewable energy sources). In NRW up to now 450 projects with 1000 living units in total were susidized up to now. All projects were evaluated by the ILS. Technical and financial datas of the buildings are therefore available. This is useful for an economic evaluation of the actions for energy efficiency. The national econimic impact of the subsidies is positively evaluated by the ILS. First numbers for the invesatment volume induced by the subsidies are available. Andrea Berngen-Kaiser will present these results at Saturday 11:10, for details see the prorgam of the conference.

Folkmer Rasch, faktor 10, Gesellschaft für Städte- und Hochbauplanung mbH, Darmstadt.
The planning office faktor 10, Folkmer Rasch and Petra Grenz, is one of the pioneers who realized the large potential of cost effective passive house construction. Numerous projects have been realized by them. Some examples: first passive house row houes in Wiesbaden (22 lunits), passive row houses in Hannover Kronsberg (32 units) this is a CEPHEUS project (www.cepheus.de) and a recognized EXPO-2000-project, passive house community 'Wohnsinn' in Darmstadt, a dwelling house with 39 living units, a dwelling house in Frankfurt/Main, Grempstraße (19 units). An actual refurbishment project in Frankfurt/Main are two blocks with 56 dwellings in total. With high thermal performance components for envelope mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and heat production a heating energy demand of 25 kWh/(m²a) will be achieved. Folkmer Rasch will give a presentation at Saturday 15:20 about an actual project.

For further information on the passive house conference see the program.

(aktualisiert: 04.04.2005   © Passivhaus Institut; unveränderte Wiedergabe unter Angabe der Quelle gestattet)