‘What? Is it still over 22 degrees after ten in the evening in a completely abandoned provincial house?!’ A tweet from Groninger Staten member Robert Pestman (BVNL) causes a storm on social media. But is the province really such an energy waster?
In a few days, almost two thousand ‘likes’, more than seven hundred retweets and about fifty reactions. Robert Pestman has sometimes attracted less attention with a tweet. He threw a photo on social media of a thermostat. And there it really is: 22.4 degrees Celsius.
‘Scorching hot for civil servants while Groningen residents cannot afford the energy price’
‘While grandpa and grandma are shivering under a blanket because they can no longer afford the energy, it is subtropically warm in an empty government building’, said the critical Member of Parliament who, after his departure from the Forum for Democracy, will be the provincial party leader for the upcoming elections. Importance of the Netherlands (BVNL) by Wybren van Haga.
‘Outrageous’, one reader responds. That’s called measuring with double standards’, says the next one. Another reaction: ‘To cry, you hypocrites’. And yet another had thought so: ‘Groningen is the epicenter of the rotten left. So that doesn’t surprise me.’
Provincial House has been off gas for two years now, heat comes from the ground for free
But is the province really such an energy waster? That’s not too bad. Pestman could also know that the Groningen provincial government has actually been completely ‘off gas’ since 2020. In any case, he should know because that job has cost a total of almost 2.7 million euros in recent years.
As a result, not even a milliliter of natural gas has been burned for those thick 22 degrees. Whereas 250,000 cubic meters used to go through it annually. The Provincial House is kept fully warm using (free) geothermal energy. Just like the recently renovated City Hall on the Grote Markt. And what they are now noticing there, just like in the provincial government: it takes some time to get to grips with such a system.
How does something like that work? With a geothermal heat system, it is important to keep the building at a constant temperature so that it is easy to switch with the weather during office hours. When the sun is shining, the roller blinds are closed or something is cooled (with water from the deep ring), when it is cold, a little geothermal heat is needed.
Search for the correct fine tuning
When fine-tuning, the technicians assume slight heat loss at night and warming due to the weather during the day. Lowering the thermostat by a degree may mean that additional heating is required during the day, so that the energy consumption actually turns out to be higher on balance. The same applies if the base temperature is too high in the summer and extra cooling is required.
“We are looking for the right balance per season,” the province responds to the fuss. Despite the search for the best coordination, they are satisfied so far at the provincial government. This year, the province will certainly achieve the intended savings on its energy savings, not only thanks to geothermal heat, but also through the switch to LED light, insulation and other measures. Since gas is no longer used, CO2 emissions have also been decimated: from previously 11.3 tons to 1.5 tons.