Housing company energy renovations can offer cost savings of up to 20%
Energy, i.e. the money reserved for heating, is the most significant item of expenditure for housing companies. In many properties, the money is completely wasted, as old doors and windows and defective insulation in the roof structures and exterior walls allow heat to escape. Old heating systems should be urgently modernised to ensure that the residents get their money’s worth.
Energy repairs can lead to major savings
Since the beginning of 2013, Raksystems has prepared more than 10,000 energy performance certificates. Based on the information collected with these certificates, the combined energy consumption of all the buildings was 1,514,616 MWh per year. This corresponds to 199,354,963 kg CO2 per year and represents a total cost of around €144,250,327 per year for these buildings combined.
The person who prepares an energy performance certificate includes in the certificate recommended repairs to improve energy efficiency. The savings potential of the proposed repairs in the 10,000+ energy performance certificates has been 321,044 MWh per year in energy, 47,804,145 kg CO2 per year and €26,080,299 per year.
If all the energy repairs recommended in the energy performance certificates had been implemented, the customers would have saved about 20% of their energy costs annually.
How to start with an energy renovation of a housing company?
Raksystems has set up a working group for the energy repairs of housing companies to facilitate energy renovations. The working group consists of architectural, HVAC, automation and structural engineers, energy experts, project managers and supervisors, not to forget our green building experts. In addition, our account managers will manage the project for you from start to finish. The working group is there to perform all the necessary calculations and draw up all the required plans for you to make the energy renovation a success.
When you place an order for a Raksystems energy service package, the project will be completed several months faster and you will save thousands of euros in total planning costs, because the initial data will be transferred between our experts in an unbroken, high-quality manner. At first, the entire team will plan and survey the site. You will be spared the hassle of arranging a new competitive bidding for each stage and transferring information between different parties.
The only thing left to the housing company will be to make a decision to start the energy repairs.
What are the most common repairs performed during an energy renovation?
When taking action, it is always advisable to be systematic so that the value and investments of the housing company will focus on the right things. Energy saving measures are just about the only improvements and repairs in a building that come with a payback period. The impact of the measures will be seen as savings in purchased energy.
Measures with a good payback period for housing companies include installing a geothermal heat pump to replace oil heating or an electric boiler, replacing double-glazed and double-framed windows dating back to the building’s construction year with windows of the MSE or MSE2 type that comply with the current standards, and in the case of residential buildings, installing an exhaust air source heat pump system. Regular heating system adjustments, balancing of the ventilation system, installation of constant-flow valves in the water system and installation of pressure relief valves are measures which will benefit the shareholders of the housing company in the long term.
Financial assistance for energy repairs
Best of all, the Finnish Government offers support to housing companies in improving their energy efficiency in 2020–2022, or as long as the budgetary appropriations last. A total of €100 million has been budgeted for the subsidies, and a subsidy can be used to cover up to half of the project costs. The most common subsidy is €4,000 per apartment, but up to €6,000 per apartment can be granted.
The subsidy is available to sites for which no other subsidies have been granted and where professionals are used for the planning and repair work. A condition for the energy subsidy is an improvement of the E figure when compared to the baseline before the construction period, i.e. all previous renovations, such as the installation of a district heating system and the improvement of the insulation of the building, are considered as merits. The subsidy can be applied for both planning and repair work. The Raksystems energy working group will prepare all the required calculations and plans on behalf of the housing company.
All of our qualified energy performance certificate calculation experts, 48 experts in total, will assist you in the initial calculations, while at the planning stage, you will have at your disposal the services of our 65 architectural/structural/HVAC/automation engineers. Furthermore, the 29 experts in our project management and supervision unit and our 27 green building experts will be there for you throughout the project period.
