As mentioned in other posts and PM, the time has come that @reef-building will soon sit around the table with the technical experts and one of the points of discussion will be energy, water recuperation, …
As sustainability is one of our foundational values, I would like to start up something around this topic. Like Chris mentioned in a post , I have the feeling we would need to start with a discussion about ‘what we mean by sustainability/durability’, to be a bit prepared for these discussion with the special techniques.
As much as I would like to postpone this item to a later date, when we have more time, i am afraid if we don’t start this up now, it will be too late, or it will lead to all kinds of discussions during the interaction with the special techniques, which will make it very hard to give ‘fast’ answers to their questions for us.
I assume this topic is for team-building, but being a rather limited bunch of people with limited energy, i would like to open it to all @reeflings. Maybe create a helping circle?
Any people (reef building or other) interested in joining?
PS a status of the info we have at this point, related to the subject:
new construction => we need to go for passive, no choice about that
we will have solar panels (how much and where not defined yet) => a prerequisit to obtain a certain peb
in the price calculation, there are no bateries foreseen to store the energy coming from the solar pannels
there will be recuperation of water
there will be green roofs (and thus for me not the possibility to go with sth else than flat roofs
soonish (i think from january 2025) no possibility to connect to gaz any more for new constructions, so we will work with heat pumps (what kind , not yet defined, but the architects seem to be talking mainly about those recuperating heat from the air)
TB asked the question about insulation material that they think of using: not oil-based materials, but mineral based materials (laine de roche, laine de verre,…), and thus not more sustainable materials as wool/fibre de bois/… neither (for now)
we asked the architects to get in contact with Filip Descamps, an expert on sustainability. So for no reaction from him. The architects have worked with him before, and the way I understood it, he goes for solutions integrating the whole neighbourhood, which is great, but don’t know if we want to go there as our time will be limited
The way I’d like to take this forward is to ask for a meeting with this Filip. From there the helping circle can then try to present a summary to the plenary.
At the meeting with the notary on Friday, he mentioned something about creating an energy framework to sell and/or share excess energy generated by the Reef. If I understood correctly, he was advising us to move forward with that sooner rather than later. And I imagine, in terms of a sustainability helping circle, that it boils down to a decision about investing more in solar panels at the beginning to recoup costs later, and perhaps also generate enough to cover running costs for the community…
checked with the architects where they are with Filip Descamps : they have relaunched the request twice now and no reaction from his part. They think he’s either not interested or too busy and advise us not to count on him any more
the architects received some updated price offers from the technical experts. They are mainly waiting for the one of B solutions , which they expect to receive after their holidays (beginning of january). So we will be signing the offers first half of January i guess, and starting discussions from mid january onwards, during 2 à 3 months. In this period the decisions about sustainability will be taken.
In this week’s Team Building meeting (@reef-building ) we discussed the sustainability as well (I was maybe a bit too hasty to launch this topic without speaking to TB first, sorry for that).
Our suggested approach to that would be to organise a workshop about it on the next PM (Sunday 05/01) and turn it into a morning and afternoon session. The workshop open for those interested in the sustainability. It would probably also be a nice interaction moment with the current exploring/associate (?) members who didn’t have the occasion yet to come to a PM.
the goal of the workshop would be to get clarity on what ‘sustainability’ means for the group and what elements in this we find most important
it would then be up to this helping circle to distill what elements of sustainability are most important (order of priority?) so that TB can clearly communicate to the architects/technical experts what it is we find important and for them to propose solutions to answer these needs, with the cost implications.
I would - personally- also like to go and have a chat with Homegrade (https://homegrade.brussels/) after the workshop/vision on what is important to us, to have another view on things/what could be feasible,…
@joannes, myself (and maybe sarah) will have a brainstorm about this workshop on Monday 30/12 19:00 online. If any of you would like to join, feel free.