Clean energy at work for earthday!
Happy Earthday, enjoy the view from Freiburg, Germany!
The Solar Settlement in Freiburg –
The Solar Settlement generates 420,000 kWh of solar energy from a total photovoltaic output of about 445 kW peak per year. If one calculates the energy savings from the optimal efficiency, here annually 200,000 liters of oil and 500 tons of CO2 are saved. For the first time worldwide, even until today, PlusEnergy was implemented as a community in Freiburg – receiving heavy worldwide response and exciting awards.
For the undertaking, financing and marketing of this PlusEnergy pilot-project a building development company was founded. A portion of the marketing was completed through four ‚Freiburg Solar Funds,‘ corporate real estate funds and simultaneously an ethical-ecological financial investment.
The Solar Settlement in Freiburg – the Sun Ship in the foreground
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daveeza (37 months ago | reply)
The Sun Ship is the service center for the Solar Settlement in Freiburg – and the first commercial PlusEnergy building. It extends itself over 125 meters along a main road and functions as a sound barrier for the housing community on its opposite side. The Sun Ship is three stories, with a northern front section that is five stories. Embedded in roof garden landscaping, nine exclusive three level penthouses were constructed. In two underground floors you will find storage rooms and a parking garage with 138 parking spaces.
The north front end of the Sun Ship is home to the renowned Ökoinstitut e.V. (EcoInstitute). On the ground floor of the main building are large sales spaces totaling 1,200 m2, used by an eco-supermarket, a pharmacy/convenience store and a café. In the two upper floors you will find offices, studios and clinical practices. The entire office space of the Sun Ship aggregates to 3,600 m2.
The Ökoinstitut in the Sun Ship Tower.
The supporting structure is made from reinforced concrete; the energy optimized façade is wooden however. In a post-beam construction the special triple-paned windows and vacuum insulation panels are fit into place. In addition to the large scale PV modules, the structural measurements are essential for the maximum energy efficiency.
However the Sun Ship is definitely not laid out as a high-tech experimental building. It accomplishes much more than that – a generous commercial building with a so far unbeatable energy balance. First of all the implemented concept here is relatively easy to adapt for commercial and other building types all over Germany and the rest of the world. Secondly it can be built, used and marketed profitably. Significant costs are saved because of an annual primary energy savings of about 1 million kWh.
A Penthouse on the Sun Ship
The refinancing of the project was achieved through two private real estate funds, which were marketed as ethical-ecological financial investments. An exemplary sustainable development project, which secured 13.3 million Euros in total – as private investments, and to a large extent, as capital asset for common interest trusts. Citizen’s financial shareholding as the broad foundation was an integral part of the concept: with a building like the Sun Ship capital can be redirected into environmentally friendly sectors of the economy.
The Sun Ship offers infrastructure for a city catchment area of about 25,000 people. To a considerable extent many of the businesses who settled in the building cater towards the sustainability industry, and thus it became an important ecological and economic pulse transmission for the region and beyond.
STEVEWILLIAMSON, Farshad Sanaee The Apple, nesoni2, Nadia Minic, and 3 other people added this photo to their favorites.
invisible consequential (21 months ago | reply)
Excellent. I used this with an article on the clean energy revolution. www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/briefings/dat a/000206
mjk23 added this photo to their favorites. (14 months ago)