"Fixing Old Houses and Saving Heating Costs"… Paradigm Shift in Seoul Urban Regeneration

Seoul City to Concurrently Implement 'Seoul Ggamum Housing Project' and 'Energy Efficiency Improvement Project' in Urban Regeneration Areas

[Asia Economy Reporter Onyu Lim] The Seoul Metropolitan Government is changing the paradigm of urban regeneration projects. Beyond simply improving the function and aesthetics of aging houses, the plan is to enhance energy efficiency to lead to a substantial improvement in residents' living environments.

Seoul announced on the 8th that, as part of the '2019 Seoul Beautiful House' project repairing 16 aging houses in the Seoul Station area urban regeneration activation zone, collaboration with the Korea Energy Foundation and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology resulted in an average energy demand reduction of 33.01%. This means that improvements in both the living environment and energy performance were achieved simultaneously.

Previously, Seoul provided a total of 100 million KRW in repair costs ranging from 300,000 KRW to 12 million KRW per household, and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology conducted customized energy consulting for each household. Based on these results, the Korea Energy Foundation supported a total of 43 million KRW, providing 2 to 3 million KRW per household to improve energy efficiency while repairing the houses. The Korea Energy Foundation replaced insulation materials, windows, boilers, and installed solar panels.

According to Seoul, after the energy efficiency improvement construction, the building energy efficiency certification grades were checked: buildings constructed before the 1950s improved from ungraded to grade 7, 1960s buildings from grade 5 to grade 3, 1980s buildings from grade 4 to grade 2, and 1990s buildings from grade 3 to grade 1, showing an average improvement of about two grades.

Seoul explained, "Unlike typical urban regeneration projects that only reinforce housing functions and improve environment and aesthetics, this project is exemplary in that it linked the energy efficiency and performance improvement of aging houses, fostering a change in awareness regarding the necessity of energy efficiency improvements."

Kang Maeng-hoon, Director of Urban Regeneration at Seoul City, said, “Many aging houses in need of repair have low energy efficiency, so we launched an energy efficiency improvement project alongside house repairs to address this. We will continue to promote house repairs and energy performance improvements together to ensure substantial improvements in residents' living environments.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.