Cooperating for sustainable neighbourhood heat management
UrbanCommunity Experiment Recap (Ghent, Belgium)
In late 2023, a small group of us from Ankerslaan and Kluisstraat, Ghent, got together. Our goal? To take advantage of the street reconstruction to also collectively tackle our heat supply. The idea was simple but challenging: working together to ensure more sustainable and efficient heat management. To achieve this, we needed to involve the rest of the neighbourhood. So we organised a New Year’s reception to share our ideas and get everyone excited.
On 28 January, we organised a friendly New Year’s drink at the intersection between the streets involved. During this reception, we presented our plan called “Put it on 50”. The idea was to lower the supply temperature of our heaters to 50 degrees in February to test whether we could save energy without sacrificing comfort. We wanted to see how this small experiment could help us on our way to a bigger, collective solution.
On 29 March, we officially met for the first time at The Hatchery. There were about a dozen of us local residents, and everyone had brought their experiences with “Put it on 50”. Although February and March were not very cold, the experiment was already yielding interesting insights. Labland, our partner in this project, facilitated the session. We talked about the benefits of joint heat supply, such as lower costs and a smaller carbon footprint. But we also realised that for successful implementation, our homes need to be energy efficient. Many ideas and experiences were exchanged, but questions remained, especially about how to make such a collective approach concrete. We would elaborate on this in more detail in the next meeting.
At the second meeting, on 25 April, we had invited Griet Juwet of Endeavour to De Broederij. She is an expert on urban design and spatial planning. Griet told us inspiring stories about how other cities in the Netherlands and Belgium are successfully working with heat networks and other forms of collective energy. After her presentation, we started working on our own future vision for the neighbourhood. We brainstormed on topics such as softening, air quality and mobility. This led to new insights on how thinking about collective energy could also help us with other shared infrastructure in the neighbourhood. While we now had a better idea of the possibilities, questions also arose about cost and technical feasibility. To answer these questions and get more involvement from the wider neighbourhood, we decided to combine the next meeting with an enjoyable BBQ.
Our summer BBQ on 24 June was a great success, with about 50 entries. The sun shone, the atmosphere was fantastic, and although we had underestimated the culinary preparations a bit, the food was delicious. At this meeting, we had invited Hartwin Leen as a speaker. He gave a fascinating presentation on collective heating projects he has realised with his company Kelvin Solutions and the technical challenges involved. This gave us valuable insights into what is needed for our own neighbourhood projects. Many questions that had been left over from the previous meetings, such as those on feasibility and costs, were clearly answered by Hartwin. The BBQ was not only an enjoyable neighbourhood party, but also a fruitful gathering full of good conversations and inspiring ideas for our neighbourhood. It was a journey full of connection and progress, and we look forward to continuing to build a sustainable and warm community together!
Interaction with municipality
We worked together with various government services throughout the process. For the organisation of the living street — which made a part of our street car-free for three months — we received logistical and communicational support from the City Service of social cohesion. For our questions about the long term redevelopment of the street and the heating project we get in touch with the district manager. She works for the City Service of policy participation and is our local point of contact. She ensures that our questions and recommendations reach the relevant municipal services. In this way we also obtained a letter of support from the City Service of environment and climate to obtain financing for a feasibility study on the heating project. This study will be carried out in close collaboration with the Department of spatial planning of the Province of East Flanders.
In general, our cooperation with government services went very well. Thanks to the ICLEI grant, we were able to quickly organise a number of activities and therefore increase support in the neighbourhood. This strengthened our position in the relationship with urban services. In the City of Ghent, a neighbourhood manager is employed for each district. This local point of contact is of great added value when citizens enter into cooperation with city services.
This blog was written by our UrbanCommunity experimenter Roeland Keersmaekers, with light editing from us. It is part of a series of narrative reports on how the experimenters have used the UrbanCommunity micro-funds to collaborate with their local government towards sustainable and just cities.
