Designing a factory for energy renovations - Indu-Zero

The problem

The North Sea Region (NSR) contains 22 million houses built in 1950-1985 that are causing 79 Mton CO2 of emissions annually. Current home renovations are being carried out on a limited-scale and many are not to nZEB standard, with three consequences:

The pace of renovations is too low.
Renovation costs are too high.
Properties not renovated to nZEB standard will continue emitting CO2, and reduce the time frame for a large uptake of deep retrofits.

So, the targets of the Climate Agreement to achieve near zero energy (nZEB) for all buildings by 2050 will not be attained if we continue with current means.

The solution with INDU-ZERO

Mass uptake of home renovations towards energy-neutral in the NSR is needed to meet EU energy and climate targets. The building sector in Europe is not creating the necessary production facilities. INDU-ZERO’s solution is to design a factory blueprint, based on Smart Industry and Circular Economy, with capacity to manufacture renovation packages suitable for all NSR countries, at a high volume (15.000 renovation packages/factory/year) and at 50% lower cost.

This blueprint, together with INDU-ZERO’s project adoption activities, will lead investors, building materials groups, housing owner associations, municipalities, governments and public authorities to bring about initiatives that will result in the needed factory developments. These factories, and the 50% cost reduction in renovation packages, will lead to a mass market uptake of home renovation packages towards energy-neutral and will ultimately reduce the environmental footprint of the NSR countries to meet EU energy and climate targets. So the project focuses on:

1. Redesigning and adapting existing renovation technology for next-generation Industry4 manufacturing.

2. Upscaling of renovation manufacturing such that the pace goes up and the costs go down.

3. Developing a blueprint for Smart Renovation Factory to manufacture the renovation packages. The blueprint will be available to all factory developers. The renovation packages will consist of an external insulated envelope, heat-recovery ventilation, renewable energy generation, and all will be recyclable (circular). The Smart Renovation Factory will have production capacity 15,000 house renovation packages per annum, and will achieve 50% reduction of renovation co

Renovation packages towards energy neutrality are to be the solution for quick and inexpensive sustainability improvements of existing homes in the North Sea Region.

Special renovation packages are helping more than 22 million homes in the North Sea Region to quickly become energy neutral and future-proof. Fifteen organisations from six countries are working together to design a factory that can produce these renovation packages at an industrial scale. The European Union has approved the plan and has made available a subsidy of over €2 million. The aim is to develop a blueprint for a fully automated factory within three years. In addition, sites are to be selected and businesses sought that will build and operate the factory.