Ingenium is helping the city government of Mechelen develop a heat strategy. With this, the city wants to be one of the forerunners in Flanders to initiate the heat transition. With a clear vision and a concrete action plan, the Mechelen building patrimony must be heated and cooled fossil-free by 2050. Therefore, Ingenium is making a series of heat-related maps for the entire territory of the city. These include the current and future heat demand, the existing heat supply in the city and an estimate of the renovation potential. Using these policy maps as a basis, we draw up heat zoning plans: a road map in which we propose concrete solutions to make each specific subarea of the city fossil-free in steps. For example, we examine where the application of a heat network could be interesting and where not.
For this assignment, Ingenium is working closely with participation specialist Levuur to guide the stakeholder process, create support and set up a local Mechelen heat coalition to effectively implement the heat strategy over the coming decades. In addition, together with the city, we are setting up a learning network around sustainable heat for the region. After all, without partners, what we do remains just a paper study.
In addition to this overall strategy, Ingenium is working to further flesh out the strategy in a number of sub-areas in the city.
Commissioned by the Environment Department and Team Vlaams Bouwmeester, united in LABO RUIMTE and the city of Mechelen, Ingenium and Levuur, together with urban planning and spatial expert Atelier Horizon, renovation expert Bureau Bouwtechniek and legal expert Metha Advocaten, are taking a close look at the Mechelen Vesten. The Climate District Mechelen Vesten is part of the Climate Districts projects. These support local administrations by providing specific expertise (design, energy, legal, financial, participatory, etc.) for drawing up a sustainable development strategy for a neighborhood. This research project focuses on two long-term ambitions of the Flemish government, namely energy transition on the one hand and a quality core reinforcement and densification on the other. The (design) research is done at the scale of the neighborhood, so that it can transcend individual interventions while remaining a manageable scale to stimulate a transition project. Besides the climate district in Mechelen, there is also a climate district in Leuven (Ter Elst garden district) and in Kortrijk (Walle building block).
The complex task of renovating and renewing existing (residential) neighborhoods is a long-term effort and requires intense collaboration between designers, residents, technical experts and governments, among others. At the same time, it is an extremely urgent task. Outdated buildings must be adapted very quickly if we want to achieve the climate goals and make our cities and towns fossil-free as soon as possible. Only by thinking about this transition task on a collective scale and in an integrated way can a solid story be written.
What is special about the Mechelen Vesten Climate District is that it simultaneously focuses on the feasibility of developing a heat network along the Vesten - a citywide infrastructure - as well as the targeted collective renovation of apartment buildings. These two complementary dynamics create transformation opportunities at various scales and with different focuses. The challenge then naturally lies in being able to pour these aspects into one coherent transition project. This requires simultaneously motivated building owners and ambitious administrators. Once the objectives are clear and the ambitions formulated, major steps can be taken through a combination of urban projects and triggering individual actions.
In addition to technical and spatial strategies, it is essential within this transition task to present a supported project. The City of Mechelen is therefore not only working on an integral heat strategy for the territory, but also on a heat coalition, in which very diverse stakeholders are gathered and where the transformation process to a fossil-free environment is central. Specifically for the Mechelen Vesten, the VMEs of the apartment buildings are being targeted, as they provide the access to a cóllective renovation of the buildings along the city ring that are more than in need of renovation.
The project operates on three different tracks. The first track is technical-innovative, focusing on the one hand on a neighborhood development plan for a heat grid along the city ring. It is thus investigating whether a heat grid linked to an urban renewal project along the Vesten proves feasible and interesting. Very technical input (related to heat supply and demand) is combined here with a view of the Vesten as a city zone with room for renewal and innovation: a future climate-robust part of the city. On the other hand, an operational framework for the collective energetic renovation of apartment buildings will also be developed, looking very specifically at two cases. These will be representative of part of the apartment buildings along the Vesten, thus helping to provide insights on the larger scale.
The second track focuses on participation and co-creation. This focuses on stakeholder analysis, support creation and coalition building. Customized engagement is encouraged with various types of workshops and focus discussions.
Efforts will also be made from this experience in Mechelen to translate the bottlenecks and concerns for energy transition and sustainable urban development into lessons for other climate districts.
For this Climate District, Ingenium is responsible for the in-depth analyses, vision and strategy formation around the (spatial) development of a heat network along the Vesten and the interaction with the buildings.
We are also studying the possibilities for a heat network in the Mechelen-North business park, as this area has potential residual heat from Aquafin's water treatment plant, among others. This heat could perhaps be used to heat (part of) the businesses on the site - and possibly, in time, a larger part of Mechelen. Together with Levuur, we will once again enter into dialogue with the various stakeholders on the site.
On the existing grounds of Fluvius, around the Keerdok and on the site of the Rodekruisplein in Mechelen, a new mixed urban development project is being realized with housing, a hotel, retail, offices and parking facilities. Commissioned by Fluvius, Ingenium investigated the feasibility of a collective very low temperature energy system for heating and cooling of the various buildings (5th generation heat or source network).
In this concept, each individual building has a collective heat pump for heating, and a heat exchanger for passive cooling. Both are connected to the energy system. This very low temperature energy system acts as the source network for the heat pumps and heat exchangers. As a heat and cold source, several collective BEO (borehole energy storage) fields are connected to this district grid, so the soil is used as seasonal storage of heat. For the thermal soil balance on an annual basis, heat extraction from the Dijle River was studied on the one hand, and sewage thermal energy on the other. Indeed, an important Aquafin sewage collector, which collects wastewater from a large part of downtown Mechelen, passes through the site and must be reconstructed for the project.
In the next phase, the concept was worked out in depth technically and answers were also sought to organizational and legal questions.
The Ragheno district is a large, ambitious, new, mixed-use and very urban neighborhood on a brownfield behind Mechelen's train station. Together with partners opus25 and Sumaqua, Ingenium is investigating how this new piece of city can deal with energy and water in a smart way. For energy, the focus of the research is on the one hand on a smart and sustainable solution, collective or otherwise, for heating and/or cooling and on the other hand on a local energy community to use the locally produced renewable energy as efficiently as possible. For water, the focus is on sustainable water use, flood risks and drought analyses, among others.
For more info contact Joris Dedecker: 050/40 45 30 or at joris.dedecker@ingenium.be.
