"Our actions are guided by two major concerns: on the one hand, we want to renovate and build housing that responds to the demand and enhances its urban surroundings, and at the same time we want to optimise our service quality and manage our properties more efficiently, notably to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions", says Claude Mante, property director for Paris's urban planning authority, OPAC— the largest social-housing landlord in France with 115,000 residential units in urban and suburban Paris.
Claude Mante, OPAC property director, Paris.
"As a long-time partner that manages 18,000 of our 80,000 collectively-heated housing units, Dalkia has the same objective as us: to improve energy management and reduce CO2 emissions.
To do that, we have focused our efforts on enhancing each building's insulation, which is part of OPAC's responsibility as the property owner, and improving building effi ciency—and that's Dalkia's core business.
"It's a win-win partnership for us, but the ultimate beneficiaries are our tenants, because they see a reduction in their charges."
France. Installing a fuel cell for Paris's urban planning authority, OPAC.
"Dalkia also proved to be the perfect partner for developing Cellia, a 250-kWe fuel cell that we installed in a Paris building in 2006. Cellia uses hydrogen from natural gas to generate both heat and domestic hot water, which is conveyed via the existing heating network to 283 housing units; the electricity produced by the system is bought back by Electricité de France. This pilot project is part of our sustainable development initiative, which also includes a number of other projects already well underway such as the installation of thermal solar panels (10,000 sq.m) and photovoltaic panels (600 sq.m), the construction of two wood boilers and one grain boiler, and the development of several CHP units. On one building we've even installed an urban wind turbine.»
Extract from the annual report 2006.
