Launch of the GROOF project

HELLO WORLD !

The Interreg V NWE project called GROOF for "Greenhouses to Reduce CO2 on rooFs" has been finally approved by Interreg program the 20th of September 2017.

The budget of the project is around 4.9M€ and co-financed at 60% by Interreg.

11 Partners coming from France, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Luxembourg are involved and led by CDEC (Council for Economic Development of the Construction sector) in Luxembourg: Training Institute for Construction skills (IFSB /LU), University of Liège (BE), Groupe One (BE), Cluster Eco-Construction (BE), Scientific and Technical Centre for Building Technology (CSTB /FR), Gally Farms (Fermes de Gally /FR), ASTREDHOR (FR), EBF GmbH (DE), Trier University of applied Sciences (HS-Trier/IfaS /DE), Autonomous University of Barcelona (E).

Each Partner brings valuable skills and knowledge to the project such as construction process and methodology, buildings energy management, urban farming development, plants and growing systems knowledge, entrepreneurship skills, socio-economic skills… 

Our project has 3 main objectives to maximise its impact over time:

TODAY

• Implement 4 demonstrators (we call them "Pilots") in France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg with the purpose of demonstrating the technical feasibility and the profitability.

TOMORROW

• Support rooftop greenhouse project carriers in NWE by providing them with a feasibility study. Stay tuned for our call for project!

MAKE THE EFFORT SUSTAINABLE

• Identify barriers but also opportunities at legal, financial and technical level for implementing a greenhouse with a CO2 emission reduction purpose on North-West Europe rooftops.

The experience gathered during the project will be shared in guidelines disseminated at the end of the project.

The work plan is simple and directly related to the main objectives.

The first step is actually the one dedicated to the sustainability of the efforts made during the project. It is related to the identification of barriers and opportunities in order to provide the best suitable guidance to the future project carriers located in North West Europe. But this does not stop here! The work done by the Project Partners will be used to reveal the advantages of rooftop greenhouses in matter of CO2 emission reduction to the public deciders and facilitators. GROOF Partners will collaborate to unlock the regulatory environment of NWE cities in order to foster the development of rooftop greenhouses projects.

Concretely, GROOF competence teams in Construction, Energy, Agro-socio-economics is looking to cooperate with existing European rooftop greenhouses to learn the keys of success which lead them to a successful implementation.

In parallel of that, GROOF Partners will do a state of the art analysis in collaboration with local entities to determine the regulatory context, the building context and the urban farming context in FR, BE, LU, DE, NL, IR, CH and UK.

The second step of the Project, starting right at the beginning as well is the development of the pilots in France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. Two of them will have a commercial purpose and will demonstrate their profitability. One will be both commercial and pedagogical. One will be experimental. GROOF Partners will follow and asses the Pilots during the entire life of the project. This starts by analysing the design of the greenhouses before their implementation and make the useful adaptation to ensure the CO2 emissions reduction requirement is met. They will then follow the development through different monitoring and improvement phases.

For the third step, GROOF is looking for rooftop greenhouse project carriers located in North West Europe. The applications will be collected in 2019 through an open call for project. The selected candidates will receive a feasibility study performed by GROOF experts on their specific project. This approach aims at fostering the development of rooftop greenhouses with a CO2 emission reduction purpose in NWE and kick start a massive demonstration of the many advantages a rooftop greenhouse can bring.

GROOF project aims at disseminate and demonstrate an alternative way to participate in the CO2 emissions reduction with compliance to the European directives. The progress and results of the project will be communicated through several channels: a web-page (www.groof.eu) hosted by Interreg NWE program, a Twitter account (link) and national media. Articles and news will be released frequently through those different channels.

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