Mönsterås municipality develops long-term strategic work for energy efficiency in buildings

For three years, the Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden has worked within the international project Act NOW. The project aims to support municipalities for energy-efficient property management. “Our goal is to strengthen our members, the public sector, with the development and use of more efficient energy monitoring, collection of energy data and monitoring of energy performance. It is also about bridging various forms of administrative barriers that slow down decision-processes and initiatives for energy efficiency by highlighting various innovative financing methods”, says Johan Milton, project manager at the Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden. “It feels great to see our work yield positive results.”

By participating in the Act NOW project, Mönsterås municipality changed its systematic work with their buildings. The municipality now has an approach of value-raising of their buildings rather than ordinary maintenance of the buildings. By focusing on preventive maintaining instead of ordinary, they avoid future problems in the buildings such as mould, moist, etc.

Marcus Olsson, building manager at Mönsterås municipality stated: ”the cooperation with Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden and the repeatedly organised local energy group meetings have been a spur for us. It has boosted the internal strategic energy efficiency work. Also, the capacity building activities within the project have led to a new approach from our financial department and we handle future investments differently. The long-term strategic energy efficiency work has now a stronger position in the budget. Our next step is to develop a premises supply plan to ensure we make the most efficient use of the existing buildings and premises we have in our building stock.

In addition to the changes in the internal work, with improved routines and a complete review of the properties, Mönsterås municipality has developed a new function as an operations technician for the buildings. The first task for Albin Berg, the newly employed operations technician, was to prepare the settings of the municipality for the new automated energy monitoring system that saves time, provides better supervision and an overview of operation and energy statistics.

Albin Berg says: “now we will have significantly better control of the properties and good conditions to reduce problems and maintenance costs in our properties.”