The development of the site 'The Loop Gent' is a Public Private Partnership between different parties. Various construction projects will be realized on the site in the coming years. The project foresees an infill with offices and office-like facilities, leisure and residential (short- and long-term) for a total program of 552,500 m² gross floor area, in addition to the surfaces of the already existing buildings of Flanders Expo (Artexis), Ikea and Holiday Inn. Commissioned by project developer Grondbank.

The Loop NV project team SUM-EVR-Daidalos-Ingenium prepared a sustainability master plan for the site. The sustainability principles according to BREEAM were translated into evaluation criteria for the entire site and individual projects. In particular, Ingenium studied the energy facilities at building and site level and the possibilities of integrating sustainable energy concepts.

It follows from the study that the techniques listed below are technically and economically feasible:

• Power plant with gas CHP and gas boilers
• Decentralized energy production with application of canal water Electricity production by PV plant

The study took a closer look at the innovative technique "decentralized heat and cold production using canal water (Ringvaart). The principle of this technique is described below. A water network is constructed on the site that uses the energy from the canal water. Various technical installations for air-conditioning the buildings (on the site) will be connected to the water network. In each building, in addition to the traditional boiler, a heat pump is installed that uses the water from the water network as an energy source. The water is also used for free-chilling using a heat exchanger (per building) and for the water-cooled chiller (per building). The initial study shows that this technique is technically and economically profitable. This technique encourages the use of low-temperature heating and high-temperature cooling, and energy exchange between different buildings is possible.