NPR looks at the „high-quality, climate-friendly apartments“ in Vienna, asking if it’s a model for addressing both climate change and the housing crisis.
About half the city’s 2 million people live in the widespread (and government-supported) apartments, with solar panels on top and very thick, insulated walls that reduce the need for heating and cooling. (One resident tells NPR they don’t even need an air conditioner because „It’s not cold in winter times. It’s not hot in summer times.“)
Vienna council member Nina Abrahamczik, who heads the climate and environment committee, says as the city transitions all of its buildings off planet-heating fossil fuels, they’re starting with the roughly 420,000 housing units they already own or subsidize…. As Vienna makes an aggressive push to completely move away from climate-polluting natural gas by 2040, it’s starting with much of this social housing, says Jürgen Czernohorszky, executive city councilor responsible for climate and environment. City-owned buildings are now switching from gas to massive electric heat pumps, and to geothermal, which involves probing into the ground to heat homes. Another massive geothermal project that drills even deeper into the earth to heat homes is also underway.
The city is also powering housing with solar energy. As of a year and a half ago, Vienna mandates all new buildings and building extensions to have rooftop solar. And Vienna’s older apartment buildings are getting climate retrofits, says Veronika Iwanowski, spokesperson for Vienna’s municipal housing company, Wiener Wohnen. That includes new insulation, doors and windows to prevent the city’s wind from getting in the cracks. The increase in energy efficiency and switching from gas to renewables doesn’t just have climate benefits from cutting fossil fuel use. It also means housing residents are paying less on electric bills…
With city-subsidized housing, housing developers can compete to get land and low-interest loans from the city. Officials say those competitions are a critical lever for climate action. „As we can control the contents of the competitions, we try to make them fit to the main goals of the city,“ says Kurt Hofstetter, city planner for Vienna, „which is of course also ecological….“ Now the housing judges give out points for things like increased energy efficiency, green roofs and sustainable building materials… Now the climate innovations in subsidized housing are inspiring the private market as well, Hofstetter says…
The article notes that most of the city’s funding is provided in the form of low-interest loans, according to a researcher at the Austrian Federation of Limited-Profit Housing Associations. (And the average social housing rents are about $700 for a large one-bedroom apartment, says Gerald Kössl, researcher at the Austrian Federation of Limited-Profit Housing Associations.)
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