Eindhoven is having difficulty making thousands of social housing homes more sustainable. That is the opinion of alderman Rik Thijs. Together with the corporations, the municipality is trying to upgrade 15,000 homes in poorer neighbourhoods, but this is proving difficult.
Growing energy problems
Only small steps are being taken, even though the municipality wants to accelerate the process. Thijs: “With prices rising, energy poverty is a growing problem. So we have to make sure that the energy bill goes down.
Problems
According to Thijs, the municipality is running into all sorts of problems. “The electricity network, for example, cannot cope. We want to use heat pumps on a large scale to help many vulnerable residents immediately, but that is proving difficult.”
More problems with biodiversity
Thijs continues: “In addition, we have started to work on insulating homes. But we are also encountering problems there. There is a shortage of people to carry out the actual work, for example. We also have problems concerning biodiversity, such as birds and bats, if we start insulating on a large scale.” Animals can die if, for example, insulation material is inserted into a cavity wall.
Energy boxes
The municipality now distributes energy boxes in order to help people a little. Such boxes contains items with which residents can take measures at home to save energy.
Budget is not the problem, according to Thijs. “As a municipality, we have received a pot of money from the state to get started with this.”
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Anitha Sevugan
