At the site in Mol, VITO currently has approximately 35,000 m² floor area of lab and office buildings under management. In time, several phased new construction and renovation projects are planned on the campus.

Ingenium examined the site's current and projected energy demand according to various growth scenarios. Renovation potential was determined for the older buildings.

We also computed a number of possible phased scenarios for local renewable electricity generation and heat and cold production solutions, such as:

• Large-scale rollout of solar panels on campus
• Electricity generation by ORC (organic rankine cycle) based on waste heat from deep geothermal energy
• Expansion of the existing high-temperature heat grid based on deep geothermal energy, supplemented by decentralized air-to-water heat pumps
• A low-temperature heat network based on deep geothermal energy hours cold network
• A source network based on cold heat storage in the ground (ATES, geothermal) for heat and cold production
• Individual air-to-water heat pumps
  

For each of these solutions, the technical potential, investment costs, maintenance costs, energy consumption and costs, CO2 emissions and total cost of ownership (TCO) were determined.

The simulation shows one of the planned new lab buildings on the VITO campus in Mol (image: SVR architects)