With ongoing activities to reduce CO₂ emissions and increase digitalisation, housing companies have already achieved a great deal. Unfortunately, however, the overall picture at present is gloomy. There is an urgent need to act. The good news is that there are already a number of solutions. But “green” goals will only be achieved through comprehensive digitalisation and the combination of local and centralised competencies.

Three young companies are combining their competencies and presenting themselves to the housing industry as a unified group.

Background

More stringent climate protection goals are putting pressure on the housing industry.

In March 2021, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety looked for the first time at who in Germany is emitting greenhouse gases and how much – and whom the government must force to reduce their emissions. The problem children here are the transport and building sectors. The building sector performed the worst in terms of its climate footprint. It is the only sector that failed. Despite new technologies and efficiency improvements, CO₂ emissions have barely fallen in the building sector to date. In view of the tightening of the Climate Protection Act following the ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, a more holistic consideration of the housing industry will be necessary in order to achieve the goals, not only on flagship projects, but as a whole and everywhere.

Goal

The housing industry must not lag behind. It must be a trendsetter with clear and focused tasks to help achieve the comprehensive implementation of climate protection.

The housing industry’s task and goal must be to achieve a balance between climate protection, social compatibility and the law. A comprehensive view must be taken of building modernisation and refurbishments as well as the operating expenses. At the same time, it is necessary to involve all stakeholders, including tenants, owners and associations. There must be opportunities to participate and transparency in order to achieve these goals and to achieve broad support for the measures. An integrated data basis should help in this regard.

Approach

A new digital basis is needed – in the form of an open data and technology platform.

First, transparency must be created or strengthened, for example, to determine the energy and greenhouse gas footprint down to the building level as a decision-making tool for refurbishment measures. This

data should be used from this point on to measure, document and visualise progress.

Different building and refurbishment conditions can be taken into account in order to enable recommendations with a broad impact. Simulations will be increasingly important here, including simulations of life-cycle-based sustainability timetables based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. With this as the broad basis, the various goals can be harmonised, as it is essential to achieve the aforementioned economically efficient, socially acceptable and effective refurbishments in order to reduce CO₂ emissions.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Peter Drucker, US economist (1909–2005)

There is a continuous representation of the investments in and operation of the building, enabling information about previously unidentified dependencies. Comprehensive monitoring will help to track the implementation effects for operational building management. A comprehensive solution will ensure the interplay of numerous sectors and stakeholders and create a scalable and transferable approach for recommended actions and partnerships.

Once this procedure is under way, all new findings and information will also be available for (automated) processes for the operational management of properties – with a positive impact on administrative work as well.

Finally, there will be a uniform view of a wide variety of building information, enabling interactions with current and new partners to benefit from digitalisation without the need to implement separate solutions.

“A comprehensive view avoids separate approaches, it prevents
isolated views of technologies towards unilateral improvements in efficiency.”
Johannes Sigulla, Senior Sales Consultant, enersis

Benefits

The housing industry puts all of its energy towards one overall goal. With a focused approach, it achieves challenging climate goals and is able to combine subgoals, integrate previously isolated activities and have all stakeholders work towards this goal.

Primarily the climate protection goals of the housing industry are achieved. A closer view reveals that individual segments or even silos can be connected or corrected through innovative technologies. The digital transformation of the housing industry will occur with the involvement of all key stakeholders. Tenants, owners, municipal politicians and other stakeholders such as tradespeople and technology providers will participate in this process.

“Achieving the climate goals requires the highest level of attention.
Technologies such as data and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms are components of the solution
as are modern heating systems and other equipment.”
Axel Schüßler, Co-Founder and CEO of IoT CONNCTD

Kontakt:

Johannes Sigulla                                       Axel Schüßler                                            Philipp Hollberg

Senior Sales Consultant enersis              Co-Founder/CEO IoT CONNCTD          Executive Director

T +49 171 912 4659                                      T +49 170 900 96 47                                    T +49 151 22 77 93 29
johannes.sigulla@enersis.de                    axel.schuessler@connctd.com                  p.hollberg@caala.de
www.enersis.de                                          www.connctd.com                                     www.caala.de