Germany Tests a Dutch Fix for Energy-Guzzling (and Ugly) Buildings
The Energiesprong approach promises to give fast and affordable green retrofits to leaky older apartments — and help Germany hit its building decarbonization goals.
An older apartment building in Germany gets a new insulated envelope courtesy of the “Energiesprong” renovation process.
Photographer: Jörg Parsick-Mathieu/dena
Two workers wait while a square piece of prefabricated wall is lowered by a crane. Like a puzzle piece, the segment is snapped into place, covering up the last bit of faded beige facade on a two-story apartment building. This ordinary mid-century housing block in a neighborhood in the west German city of Moenchengladbach is getting a quick and dramatic efficiency upgrade, thanks to a green renovation technique called Energiesprong.
The method, also known as serial renovation, was devised in the Netherlands in 2010. In Dutch, the term means “energy jump,” and speed is indeed the point. Prefabricated facade components, complete with high-performance windows, are built in factories and then wrapped around buildings, giving them an insulation makeover that’s faster and cheaper than a typical whole-home renovation. Solar panels and heat pumps complement the retrofit, transforming leaky older buildings into “Net Zero” homes that can produce as much power as they consume.
That’s the idea behind the approach, at least. Energiesprong-inspired projects are popping up outside the Netherlands, including in California and Canada. Germany is one of the latest countries to push serial renovation after struggling to hit carbon reduction targets. Buildings contribute a quarter of German greenhouse gas emissions, and the current rate of energy efficiency renovation is far too low to reach climate goals — it would have to quadruple, according to a study by DIW Berlin. The country’s dependence on imported gas adds another layer of urgency, underscored by the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.