Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2008

BERLIN IS SHOWING THE WAY: ENERGY SAVINGS CONTRACTS ALLOW LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND THEIR OWN FINANCES.

Jörg Bräuer, the local district Energy Commissioner, is standing in the yard of the Ernst-Reuter High School in central Berlin. And he doesn’t like what he sees: cracks in the walls, single-glazed windows, sealant crumbling out of the joints in the frames. Enough to bring tears to an energy commissioner’s eyes. “This is a disaster, this building is in urgent need of modernization.”
No question, the state of the building, part of which dates from the early 1950s, qualifies it as an energy black hole. Nevertheless, in 2006 the Ernst-Reuter High School spent almost 56 percent less on heating than in the year before, and it expects its electricity bill to be around 37 percent lower. The key to this apparent contradiction is to be found in the school basement.Two new heating boilers with a combined capacity of 900 kW stand alongside two of the four old boilers that used to heat the school. The latter are almost twice the size as their new neighbors, and all four added up to 4.4 MW, more than four times their modern replacements. One of the old monsters is no longer used at all. The other is only fired up when the temperature falls below – 14 degrees Celsius. The new high-efficiency boilers were financed and installed by Wolfferts, a subsidiary of Bilfinger Berger Facility Services. The technical services provider has replaced 35 old boilers, modernized ventilation and control systems and installed 15,000 thermostatic valves and countless low-energy bulbs at a total of 73 sites in the Berlin Mitte district, mainly in schools and sports halls. On behalf of the district,Wolfferts has not just invested € 5.5 million in new energy saving technology:The company guarantees that it generate cost savings for its client at all 73 sites totaling € 1.14 million per year by 2018. That’s a reduction of 29.9%. Not to mention the 8,000 ton cut in CO2 emissions, equal to 36 percent per year.

SQUARING THE CIRCLE
For cities and local authorities, energy savings contracts have several attractions: Instead of relying on the public sector, energy service providers invest in properties and share the cost savings with the client, to the benefit of both resources and the climate. For Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit this successfully squares the circle: “Public buildings are being modernized without the local authority having to invest the money. And at the same time we save on energy costs and help to protect the environment.”In fact Berlin is noted as a Europe-wide pioneer: Since 1995 some 22 energy- saving partnerships have been formed with private service providers such as Wolfferts. In turn, the latter have invested well over € 40 million in schools, hospitals, courts and opera houses.
The 73-site “Pool 18”comprises 150 individual buildings. Which means thatWolfferts is servicing one of the largest contracting pools in Germany. The win-win situation for clients, contractors and the environment is all the more surprising in that it was borne out of desperation—the public purse was empty. Energy-saving contracts are often the only option open to local authorities to invest in modernizing their buildings. “Our budget certainly wouldn’t have run to the € 5.5 million that Wolfferts put up,” confirms Energy Commissioner Jörg Bräuer. “And even if the money were there, we don’t have the engineers and designers to put the money to work so quickly.”
Of course it is important that the users of the buildings should be aware of the need to save energy. Jörg Bräuer still hears far too many tales of doors and windows left open, students spending ages under the showers after sports, and empty gymnasiums with the heating left on. But modern technology swiftly uncovers and even prevents such profligacy. The schools are now linked by a direct line to a central control room which monitors all of the new boilers and regulates their output according to the usage of the building. Gone are the days when the school janitor controlled the heating “by the seat of his pants.” Discrepancies between actual and expected energy consumption are quickly detected, allowing Wolfferts’ engineers to respond with equal speed to technical problems and provide assistance. Motion sensors turn out the lights in rooms where no movement is detected and the new thermostatic valves are adjusted to comply with the Senate’s heating directive. “There was a time when anyone could open the valves and wind the classroom temperature up to 25 degrees Celsius,” explains Jörg Bräuer. “Now the valves shut off at 20 degrees Celsius.”
Bräuer is now standing in the gymnasium at the Anna- Lindh Elementary School. Next to him is Wolfferts Manager Gerd Lehmann. The two engineers check out the cracked windows and discuss the radiators that date from 1957. They at least need a reflective shield behind them to direct the warmth into the room rather than into the fiftyyear- old brickwork. Thanks to the technology installed by Wolfferts, year on year the Anna-Lindh School is also spending 57 percent less on heating and 17 percent less on electricity, well above the 29.9 percent thatWolfferts guarantees the district will save on average at all its buildings. But still you can see the engineers’ hearts bleed, knowing how much more could be achieved if funds were also invested in the fabric of the building. “Fitting the new boilers was like giving the school a heart transplant, but the veins remain the same—the old pipes are too large, we’re still heating and pumping far too much water,”says Lehmann. Bräuer nods in agreement. Not to mention the windows, the wall insulation, the roof.
However, these too could soon become the target of a new generation of contracting models. “Energy-Saving Partnership Plus”is the term coined by Udo Schlopsnies, an engineer at the Berlin Energy Agency which specializes in contracting, putting pools of buildings out to tender for its clients and providing expert oversight. “We have projects that are almost ready to go out to tender that will entail investment not just in new heating systems but in modernizing the buildings themselves. Which means these buildings will manage with even smaller boilers and pumps.”

MODERNIZATION RETURNS A PROFIT
On the other hand, private investors will have to put up substantially greater sums which cannot be refinanced solely out of energy savings, at least not over the usual contract terms of twelve to 15 years.There is also another hurdle to overcome: “The client would have to provide a kind of construction cost subsidy, and under current funding conditions, that would be difficult,” Udo Schlopsnies believes. Nevertheless he has high hopes for the new contracting model: “The more energy prices rise, the greater the impact of every kilowatt hour saved. So modernization begins to return a profit.”

Text: Stefan Scheytt, Photos: Frank Schultze
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2008