An insulated and renovated building is the basic requirement for switching from oil and gas to renewable energies. However, this requires a lot of specialist knowledge, organizational work and paperwork from the owners. The start-up cobee from Vienna works in the Climate Lab on digital tools for optimal, individually tailored support in the planning phase. Artificial intelligence is also used to give interested parties free advice.
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High prices and uncertain supply – many people now want to get out of oil and gas for good. Heat pumps are booming as an alternative, but often require an insulated and renovated building. This creates hurdles and presents owners with major obstacles. The same happened to the founders of cobee. “A personal redevelopment project in a residential complex gradually developed into a complicated running of the gauntlet. There was hardly any support for all the different questions and problems,” says Marlene Würfl.
So Marlene Würfl, together with Toren Gebauer and Lukas Stanek, decided to develop a digital companion themselves. The tool is intended to use ecological, technical, economic and social factors according to standardized procedures in order to quickly and easily obtain a better basis for deciding which measures are the right ones for one’s own building. The free AI is said to work similar to ChatGPT. Users should be able to talk to her and ask questions about insulation, renovation and changing heating and energy systems.
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According to the founding team, this is also urgently needed, because Austria wants to be climate-neutral by 2040. The building sector plays a very important role in this. With around 13 percent of CO2 emissions, it is one of the three largest sources of CO2 in the country, alongside industry and transport. There are over a million fossil gas heating systems in Austria. In Vienna alone there are around 400,000 apartments that use decentralized natural gas heating.
It is estimated that more than 500,000 detached and semi-detached houses have an inadequate thermal standard. The federal government has therefore set itself the goal of raising the annual renovation rate from one percent to three percent. It is hoped that this will not only lead to savings in energy consumption and CO2 emissions, but also to economic stimuli. Up to 30,000 new jobs could be created in this way.
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AI provides building owners with a basis for decision-making
It should also be worthwhile for house and apartment owners to become active. Depending on how energy prices develop, facade insulation should pay off financially after just eight years. However, owners who want to make their own house climate-friendly quickly find themselves in complex planning and coordination processes. The time required to familiarize yourself with the topic and to handle the organization is too high for most people. cobee wants to solve this problem.
There are four steps in cobee’s plan to make the transition to renewable energy in buildings:
1. Information: The KI guide answers individual questions about renovation.
2. Data collection: The required data is collected fully automatically.
3. Analysis: Current status and potential are analyzed automatically.
4. Presentation: The tool prepares the results in an easily understandable way, taking into account individual needs.
The start-up wants to use a fully automated process to provide building owners with an initial basis for making decisions. The determination of remediation goals on a competent basis should become much easier. The launch of the AI guide is planned for autumn. Interested parties will soon be able to talk to the AI for free and get advice. Unlike ChatGPT, however, the advisor AI is based on a curated database with reliable information on insulation, renovation, energy and heating systems.
Pilot project in Vienna with around 90 apartment owners
According to their own statements, the team at the young company is constantly working on further developing the AI and the underlying databases. The other digital tools should then follow step by step, so that it becomes as easy as possible for everyone in Austria to get their own four walls climate-friendly.
The FH Technikum Wien, tatwort, ÖGUT and cobee have started a pilot project together, funded by the Vienna Business Agency. In Vienna, a plan is being developed for a residential complex together with around 90 apartment owners as to how the building can best be renovated and made climate-neutral. The experiences flow into the development of the digital tools in order to develop the ideal digital companion in the energy and heating transition.