Schaerbeek, BE

The municipality of Schaerbeek is part of the metropolitan area of Brussels in Belgium and has a population of approximately 131,000 inhabitants. Together with the other municipalities of the Brussels metropolitan area, Schaerbeek has been implementing innovative measures to reduce its CO2 emissions for ten years already.

To achieve this objective, the municipality decided in 2007 to design a Municipal Sustainability plan including a local plan to fight against climate change. Within this plan, Schaerbeek has committed to reduce the energy consumption in municipal buildings by 30% and to develop solutions for more sustainable mobility within the city. As part of the solutions implemented, a new nursery has been built following the passive-energy consumption standards. In addition, many private or commercial new buildings that have been built recently in the city also follow these standards. Furthermore, the municipality was a finalist in the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge in 2014 thank to its plans to use drones and 3D geothermal mapping technology to provide each homeowner and tenant with a personalised energy audit and incentives to invest in energy-saving strategies.

Within the Replication cluster, the municipality of Schaerbeek will have the opportunity to network with other European cities interested in energy-efficient building refurbishment while discovering the solutions already implemented in the framework of the SINFONIA and EU-GUGLE projects.