Public buildings are an important meeting place between the government’s policy and the citizens. It’s an interface where sustainability approaches become tangible. Realising a sustainable public building stock has many more advantages then just lowering the energy and maintenance bills. The public buildings are increasingly becoming multi-functional, are adapting to changing needs of public services and guarantee a healthy indoor climate.

SURE2050 wants to make the public building stock of local and central governments future-proof. It is an important step in the direction of becoming climate neutral. Via applying the right set of tools, templates and instruments in combination with hands on practical support, SURE2050 wants to bring the Flemish public buildings stock towards a European level of excellence. The rationale behind this, is creating a better and greener public real estate for our citizens.

Within the SURE2050 coaching program we focus on three steps:

1. Organisational improvements: identifying ways to professionalise the decision making and to start implementation of measures in an cost-efficient and effective way.
2. Real estate optimisation: realising a coherent future-proof real estate strategy with milestones of 2030, 2040 and 2050.
3. Energy efficiency measures: preparing, tendering and implementing investment projects (incl. searching adequate financing solutions) to reduce the buildings’ energy demands.

All these aspects are investigated in-depth during a (free) coaching and training program. The participating entities receive tutorials, templates, guidebooks, decision making tools and other useful instruments to support them.

Plenty of the existing public buildings need to be renovated in-depth to reach the climate and energy targets. A huge investment is needed and simultaneously, public budgets are scarce. However, within your existing building stock, there is also a big potential of finding adequate resources and implementing cost savings.

Currently the long-term renovation strategies are lacking. At the same time, the competences to act on it, are fragmented within the public entity’s different divisions or departments. Missing an adopted vision and coming up short on coherent decision-making is preventing the public building stock from becoming climate neutral. SURE2050 will support to make the right choices on the right time to realise a cost-efficient climate-neutral public building stock.  

Read here the final report of SURE2050.