How do municipalities best achieve energy improvements in housing? – With the right digital tool and an impactful information campaign.

We need to dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions in the coming years, which requires significant housing changes. 40 % of our energy consumption goes towards heating buildings, and the majority of our energy consumption comes from fossil fuels. The key to significantly reducing our CO2 emissions lies in getting more out of the energy we use in our homes. This is achieved through energy renovation and transitioning to more climate-friendly heating methods.

Municipalities have taken on a leading role in efforts to achieve Denmark’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and municipal climate employees are very aware that enabling active participation from homeowners relies on providing objective information and inspiration regarding their opportunities for significant savings on heating bills. However, an impactful information campaign requires a substantial effort from each municipality, and the challenge of providing well-founded personal and professional advice is resource-intensive.

To solve the task of how municipalities best achieve energy improvements in homes, Viegand Maagøe has developed the digital tool, Boliganalysen. Boliganalysen provides information on the potential for energy improvements down to the individual address with just a few clicks and communicates directly with homeowners. The digital tool assists municipalities in effective and targeted communication with homeowners about opportunities to save on energy bills. With Boliganalysen, municipal climate employees can tailor information and inspiration to selected homeowners, such as options for converting to district heating or heat pumps for homeowners currently using natural gas.

Boliganalysen integrates vast amounts of data from various public sources into a user-friendly interface. It provides users with insights into the housing stock, including energy labels, oil-fired boilers, and property age. Boliganalysen can be utilized to communicate directly with citizens through e-boks (a secure digital mailbox) and personalized URLs (web links).

In the development, there has been placed particular emphasis on ensuring that citizens do not feel intimidated or monitored due to the use of data. The goal is to provide homeowners with inspiring insight, focusing on possibilities, sustainability, and potential energy savings together with simplifying the task of communicating possible energy improvements.

Boliganalysen helps ensure that municipalities achieve their climate goals and assists citizens in finding solutions that not only provide significant savings but also, in most cases, a more comfortable home. Boliganalysen enables municipalities to assess where they should prioritize their efforts.
With the tool, they can, for example, focus on:

• Homes with poor energy ratings
• Properties using oil-fired boilers
• Homes constructed before a specific year
• A specific neighbourhood or individual street.

Previously, it could take municipalities’ climate employees up to 14 days to gather data, define a target audience, and set up a generic campaign. The same task can now be done effectively and efficiently in a morning or less – now with campaign content tailored to each individual recipient. With Boliganalysen, municipalities have the opportunity to move away from resource-intensive, generic mass communication in favour of targeted messages and insights that assist each individual citizen.

In 2022, over 60 new municipalities were onboarded, bringing the total number of municipalities using the Housing Analysis to 92 out of 98.  And the municipalities’ utilization is steadily increasing.