The Belgian demonstration site is located in the city of Liège. The building is used by an industrial engineering college with 1.200 students. The useable floor area is 23,000m2. The owner of the building is the Province of Liège.
The province of Liège has several reasons for participating in BRICKER - it wishes to reduce pollutant emissions (CO2) but also to accommodate a demonstration site with a good replication potential for its other public buildings. Furthermore, the college needs to train its students in “state of the art” technologies and expects high visibility through its involvement in the project.
Several interventions are proposed such as insulation of the external wall, installation of 15 decentralised ventilation units, the installation of OCR co-generation units. The building blocks are currently classified as E in the energy rating scheme and it is expected to shift to category B by the end of the BRICKER project. Preliminary estimations stand at around 86% reduction in electrical consumption from the grid, and 75% in gas consumption. The associated investment costs of the new technologies to be implemented represent about 9% of the total costs of an equivalent new building in Liège (Belgium). The total return of the investment (ROI) period is expected to be 7.2 years.
The replication potential of the case study is high as SPB is designer and manager for the construction and the maintenance of the Province’s Building. This includes 370 buildings representing a total building floor area of 500,000m². A replication plan for these buildings will be drawn up. Transferability of results to social housing will strengthen this plan.