RE-LEAF (English page)

Renovation affordable for everyone? Project RE-LEAF investigates possibilities.

How do we accelerate the renovation rate in Limburg? What resources are needed to keep the renovation of houses and apartments affordable?

With the new European EU LIFE project RE-LEAF, Energiehuis Limburg and the Province of Limburg are developing new tools and solutions. The tools will help Limburg renovators on their way to comfortable, healthy and future-proof houses and apartments.

Lowering renovation threshold for different target groups

For years, Energy House Limburg has been the successful one-stop shop for future-proof renovations: citizens can go there for objective advice and guidance on all steps of their home renovation.

Energy House Limburg is a collaboration between Dubolimburg and Stebo, who act as renovation consultants, and lender Onesto. It experiences from the front that the threshold for a thorough renovation is too high for owners with smaller incomes. Complex situations often make affordable renovation difficult. Therefore, within this RE-LEAF project, Energiehuis Limburg is working out levers and developing solutions aimed at specific target groups.

“RE-LEAF builds on the successes of our previous European project C-REAL. The solutions we are looking for are very concrete. For apartments, for example, we are developing user-friendly tools for the syndic. These allow the creation and management of a long-term investment and maintenance plan. By including the needs of credit institutions and insurers, these tools also help optimize the financing mix for renovations,” explains Hans Vermeulen, general director of Energy House Limburg.

Low-income homeowners often do not have access to credit. For them, RE-LEAF seeks solutions for financing the works, such as renovation through models of shared ownership.

By partnering with real estate and credit brokers, buyers are better prepared at the beginning of their buying and renovation adventure, and efforts are being made to prevent energy poverty.

Developing, testing and implementing an optimized approach to collective neighborhood renovation will greatly boost renovation rates.

“Setting up an ecosystem for starting up energy communities, is the icing on the cake,” continued Hans Vermeulen.

RE-LEAF enables Energiehuis Limburg to pass on good practices to other housing renovation service providers, such as energy houses, financial institutions, renovation consultants and syndicates.

In this way, RE-LEAF wants to create a multiplier effect in Flanders and even beyond.

Specifically, Energiehuis Limburg wants to save 1.402 gigawatt hours per year by 2028, the end of the project. In reduction of CO2 emissions, that means 283 tons per year.

A total investment in energy measures of 8,325,000 euros is targeted.