Increasing the transparency of consumption to achieve greater savings - and at the same time create more climate protection in the housing sector. Can it work?
Faced with rising rents and the current high energy prices, it is only a matter of time before the debate about limits in residential housing climate protection comes to a head.
Clearly climate protection does not come for free. However, often this quickly gives way to the question of who is going to pay for it. The debate over whether tenants or landlords should pay the additional costs is understandable, but fails to get to the heart of the matter. This is also shown by the findings of a recent tenant study conducted for us by Professor Pfnür of Darmstadt Technical University.
Climate protection in the building sector needs quick successes. A study commissioned by the noventic group on the role of tenants in climate protection shows that tenants are willing to make greater climate protection efforts within their own four walls, provided the cost, convenience and simplicity are right. To achieve rapid CO2 savings, the 1,000 tenant households surveyed showed a high level of acceptance of both the automation of heating and hot water supply and sharing of their own consumption data.
Today the discussion about more climate protection in rented housing has become overly focused on shifting costs and responsibility back and forth. In this context, digital climate protection technologies have long since provided solutions beneficial not only for the climate but also to tenants and landlords alike. All lawmakers have to do is create a safe, future-proof framework for everyone. A recent study conducted on our behalf by Andreas Pfnür, professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and Dr. Nikolas Müller, an engineer conducting post-doctoral research in the same faculty, found that many tenants are willing to make a substantial contribution to greater climate protection.
Whether the provision of consumption data visualisation has an impact on energy consumption in rented apartments was investigated in a study by energy anthropologist Babette Peulicke Slott of the Danish Technological Institute. Here you can find out what her findings were and whether visualisations do actually have an effect on consumption behaviour and thus on energy consumption.
Professor Dr. Andreas Pfnür, of Darmstadt Technical University (TU Darmstadt), and noventic Managing Director Dr. Dirk Then discuss the noventic study, in which 1,000 tenants were asked about their role in climate protection in the housing industry. How great is their willingness to participate in residential housing climate protection? And what role do costs, automated processes, digitisation and sharing consumption data play?
In the future, the noventic group and tado° will jointly develop smart control solutions for the efficient use of heat energy in buildings. To this end, as one of the leading groups of companies for the climate-intelligent management of real estate noventic will invest in PropTech. As part of an ongoing round of investments noventic and existing shareholders will be investing a total of 38 million euros.
The noventic group, pioneer of climate-smart real estate, is investing in the venture capital fund PropTech1, the European fund for the real estate industry’s untapped innovation potential. The venture capital fund has enabled the Group to gain systematic access to excellent research on real estate innovation and development trends throughout Europe.
Sabine Nallinger, Executive Director of the Foundation 2°, and Dr. Dirk Then, Managing Director of the noventic group, discuss how the industry can economically implement the new requirements of the Green Deal EU in the building sector.
Germany's building stock is expected to be almost climate-neutral by 2050. To date the road to that goal has been very costly – and not successful enough. Now the GdW and the Economic Council are calling for a paradigm shift on the Federal Government's part.
The schoolchildren's initiative Plant-for-the-Planet was created in 2007 by nine-year-old Felix. His goal was to join together with children all round the world to plant trees and thereby contribute to saving the climate. The noventic group is glad to support this goal, and donated 2,500 trees at Christmas.
The reconciliation of climate protection and economic concerns is what Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, calls for in his opening speech at the 2020 Energy Transition Congress. His 20-point plan "Protecting the climate & strengthening the economy" lays the foundation for these concerns. The spotlight also falls on the real estate industry: how can the necessary efficiency potential in the building stock be realised through refurbishment concepts and digitisation? For the economy, Altmaier notes, the biggest problem is uncertainty, which could lead to a failure to make the investment needed. His approach is to create a clear framework over the long term, extending across several electoral terms.
