Hamburg aims to reduce building energy usage by 30 per cent

German city will hydraulically balance radiators and install smart thermostats in a large proportion of its public building stock to decrease consumption this winter.

The City of Hamburg is aiming to reduce energy consumption in public buildings by up to 30 per cent this winter.

The German city government is working with the commercial real estate Sprinkenhof to introduce measures, which go beyond the requirements of the German government’s latest energy-saving ordinance.

Smart thermostats

The project will be implemented in a large proportion of the city’s building stock before the end of this heating season. Berlin-based company myWarm will carry out hydraulic balancing on around 10,000 radiators in around 50 large public buildings. At the same time, Hamburg is the first major German city to install smart thermostats on a large scale. These come from Hamburg-based portfolio company Vilisto.

The combination of measures is expected to save up to 30 per cent or 15 gigawatt hours of heating energy per year in the buildings. This is roughly equivalent to the average annual consumption of 1,800 apartments with an area of 60m2.

“With this major project, the city of Hamburg is sending a clear signal for a comprehensive heat transition”

“In addition to long-term projects in line with our urban climate plan, the upcoming cold season also calls for immediate measures with a short-term impact,” said Dr Andreas Dressel, finance senator of the City of Hamburg. “Our public companies and also public buildings have an exemplary role to play in the challenges posed by the energy crisis – their scale alone gives them a correspondingly strong leverage effect and they can save significant amounts of energy. The project now underway is enormously promising and can make an important contribution to saving energy.”