The transnational Interreg VA program of Flanders-Netherlands brings together Flemish and Dutch partners in the ENLEB project that aims at developing an integrated concept for making residential private homes more sustainable on the basis of co-creation, with the focus on self-sufficiency, so that homes remain energy-neutral even if the residents’ energy profile changes.
The research covers 9 neighbourhoods and several demonstration homes spread out over the Netherlands and Flanders. During the project, the demo homes serve as a demonstration and experimentation space for innovations like DC-technology, zeolite-heating, and integration of ducts in the “shell” of the building. The goal of assisting the neighbourhood approaches and demonstration homes is to gain insights about starting a co-creation process in which the project partners raise awareness, promote stewardship and come up with innovative solutions together with companies, local authorities and citizens. In the end, the project analyses the ongoing retrofitting of demo homes and the ongoing neighbourhood energy retrofitting approaches in order to come to a menu of options for home-owners for retrofitting their homes.
The ENLEB partnership includes 9 organisations from the Netherlands and Flanders: Kamp C, Zonnige Kempen, Thomas More and UCLL on the Flemish side and Maastricht University, Hellas Rectifiers, the TIORC cooperative, the Avans Foundation and Eindhoven University of Technology on the Dutch side. The project started in 2017 and runs until mid-2020.
Currently Maastricht University is working on a tool for developing a neighbourhood energy baseline analysis that combines social economic data with the energy profile of the neighbourhood as well as information on the houses.
