Renovation Center

A nordic center for energy efficient renovations

The energy efficiency of buildings is an important factor when it comes to stopping climate change. Energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings represents around 40 % of total final energy use. Moisture and mold problems are a threat when trying to maintain sustainable buildings. The neglected building maintenance is currently estimated to cost 30-50 billion euros in Finland. Neglected building maintenance and postponed repairs leads to aggravated user health problems and more extensive need and increased costs for repairs. The costs for increasing the energy efficiency in buildings are significantly lower if coordinated with necessary renovations.

Insufficient expertise on how to design and renovate buildings is a major barrier to energy efficient and sustainable buildings. To be able to meet the new demands there is an urgent need for competence development and better training in the building sector. The main goal for this project is therefore to increase the number of skilled professionals needed to perform resource and energy efficient renovations within the Botnia Atlantica area. The goal can be reached by establishing a Nordic Renovation Center.

The center would be a Nordic knowledge network that would share best practices and support regional stakeholders with information, education and new pedagogical tools on how to perform sustainable renovations. The primary target groups are companies within the building sector, municipalities and house owners. In order to provide relevant information, the project will gather information on end user needs and renovation methods.

The companies, municipalities and property owners who participated in project activities will, after the project, have expanded their network of valuable contacts, have an increased knowledge on sustainable renovation methods and have new tools for proactive property maintenance and energy efficient renovations.

Project time: 1.4.2015–31.3.2018

The project i coordinated by Novia University of Applied Sciences. The partners are Vaasa Region Development Company, Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Umeå University/TFE, Umeå University/Education, SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, County council of Västerbotten and Narvik University College.