good on steam, but not always checking
These are resounding figures that alderman Zita Pels (Public Housing) presents about the energy saving service of the municipality. In parts of the Center, North, New West and Southeast, thousands of Amsterdammers have been visited at home in recent months with the offer of better insulating their home for free.
Halfway through, Pels is ahead of his own ambitions. In six months she wanted 24,000 households visits. After three months, she is therefore well ahead of schedule. The work is done by teams from Climate Route and Profit from your home, companies that emerged as winners from a tender from the municipality. On average, they spent an hour per household with draft strips, LED lamps and water-saving shower heads and lots of radiator foil, door strips and shower timers.
Critical
These are small measures, not moving insulation. In the meantime, the help of the municipality should not be confused with the FIX brigades that have existed for some time, which take care of a drafty house in a much more controlled way and sometimes take a day or even longer to do it. The acclaimed FIX Brigade from neighborhood organization Jungle Amsterdam is on the teams that go door to door for Pels.
The FIX Brigade sometimes visits homes that have already been visited by the energy saving service. That happened about fifteen times – a small number of ten based on the total of 15,000, but in all cases the FIX Brigade had a lot of notes about the work of the teams, says director Jannekee Jansen op de Haar. The fixers have already found a lot of loose draft strips and baggy movable radiator foil. “There was not a single house including our guarantees: do nothing about it.”
‘Sometimes even worse’
A lot goes wrong, especially when hanging draft strips. “They stick it in multiple places, which sometimes even makes it worse. We have also often come across such a travel band hanging in a vacuum.” Many lamps are also forgotten when installing LED lighting.
Jansen op de Haar substantiates her conclusions with photos that the FIX Brigade also sent to the municipality. “The answer was always: yes, but this is such a bad house.’ While for us that was just an average case.”
Tinkering
It is of course possible that the FIX brigade mainly comes to the homes where the insulation is most lacking, so that there is no redness for the energy saving service. “But it would be very coincidental that all the homes we visit are messy.”
According to a spokesman, the municipality has also received some complaints, but few, less than ten. They point to the high satisfaction rate. Residents give the aid an average of 8.1. Because the municipality has incurred less costs so far than large, men hope to be able to visit another 2,000 to 4,000 households plus the 24,000 in the months that remain.
Elaboration of isolation offensive
The municipality’s energy saving service has ended within the first phase of the announced coalition agreement isolation offensive. The aim is to help the most vulnerable Amsterdammers with energy savings as quickly as possible. In addition, money has been made available for VVEs to remove bottlenecks in the separation of homes and, for example, collective purchasing campaigns have been organised.
Pels will come up with an elaboration on how they will improve homes in the city structure. With the 32 million euros released for the entire isolation offensive, you hope to unleash a flywheel effect in the city, in which everyone is caught up.
For example, at the energy-saving service, she also appealed to its own officials to help. The enthusiasm was not yet very great. A total of 85 civil servants have observed themselves, 64 have actually been active.