Education

KU Leuven for Leuven Climate Neutral 2030

The KU Leuven is the largest university in the country, with faculties in 11 different locations. Together they accommodate around 60,000 students all over Flanders.

KU Leuven for Leuven Climate Neutral 2030
April 17, 2024
image project use case KU Leuven

Leuven Climate Neutral 2030

"We have very old buildings and are committed to making them more efficient, which is a very big challenge," explains Bert Vandeborght, Head of the HVAC Project Office, KU Leuven. "We are involved in Leuven Climate Neutral 2030 and want to play a leading role in this as a university."

"We want to make sure we achieve the maximum saving potential throughout the entire chain. This applies both for the research conducted here by our HVAC project office department, and for its implementation when the work is carried out by a contractor," says Vandeborght.

New build, renovation and existing premises

"We start to tackle these challenges by formulating clear, high-level objectives. We build new construction projects fossil-free. There is no question about this. In existing buildings or boiler rooms that are being renovated, we aim to cover a certain amount of the heat demand fossil-free – about 80% in this way. This is the high-level objective that needs to be worked out in more detail before we investigate new techniques which allow us to achieve them. We look at heat pumps and geothermal energy, for example. This is actually easily achievable in new constructions, but a major challenge for existing buildings. Finally, in addition to our big projects, we have existing premises with various older installations in operation which we also want to use as optimally as possible. The principle that we adopt here is to go for it if the investment will be repaid within half its life span."

Hysopt helps quantify saving potential

"An important advantage of Hysopt for us is the fact that it helps us quantify the saving potential of hydraulically optimised installations," says Vandeborght, Head of the HVAC Project Office at KU Leuven.

"Another advantage of the Hysopt software is that our own research department can design the systems. We can also take on the challenge of designing and validating hybrid installations of boiler rooms with boilers and heat pumps using Hysopt. We see our continued collaboration with Hysopt as something that will allow us to optimise the various buildings further over the coming years, and have signed a framework agreement with Hysopt for several years with the ambition of hydraulically optimising the buildings one at a time," concludes Vandeborght.

KU Leuven for Leuven Climate Neutral 2030

Explore more

image project use case vub
Education

VUB

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has three main campuses, Etterbeek, Jette and Gooik and various other buildings spread across the capital. All hydraulic systems in these buildings needed optimising, which is where Hysopt came into play.
image project use case UA
Education

University of Antwerp

The University of Antwerp has 20,000 students, manages 88 buildings covering 350,000m2 floor space in total, and is planning to add a further 15,000m2 floor space for high-tech laboratories in the near future.
image project use case ZNA
Healthcare

Hospital ZNA

ZNA is one of Belgium’s largest healthcare providers. It is comprised of three general and six specialist hospitals, two medical centres and a residential care facility, all in and around Antwerp, making it the largest hospital network in Belgium