What is a Positive Energy District (PED)?
A PED is a clearly defined neighbourhood that comes together and takes action around one or more major energy projects:
- a geothermal power plant
- a heating network
- an energy community
- a group renovation project
- ...
These projects serve as a basis for launching an energy transition in the neighbourhood.
The long-term goal is to achieve a 'zero energy' neighbourhood at the collective level: it produces enough energy each year to offset what it consumes.
The energy transition cannot rely solely on individual households, property owners or organisations. To achieve climate targets, a collective framework is needed to link individual efforts to a common project. This is the role of Positive Energy Districts (PED): to act at neighbourhood level to make the transition clearer, more coordinated and accessible to everyone.
The City is developing infrastructures and open projects: you can initiate them, participate in them, join in when you are ready... or simply benefit from them.
Each neighbourhood is unique, with its own history and challenges. Transforming it into a PED makes it possible to:
- connect major climate goals to residents' daily lives through collective solutions that support local residents, users and organisations
- achieve a 'critical mass' for better use of local resources: External sitesunroofs, waste heat, External sitegeothermal potential, available public spaces - and to experiment with technical, social and organisational innovations.
- ensure a fairer transition, by ensuring that the benefits (comfort, lower consumption, more stable bills, more sustainable energy) gradually benefit everyone, including the most vulnerable households
- make the energy transition concrete and visible, with shared projects, timelines and objectives
- make the neighbourhood a place of learning that inspires other neighbourhoods and moves the City towards 'net zero energy'
In this way, every individual action - reducing consumption, improving buildings, joining a project - contributes to a collective dynamic that benefits the entire neighbourhood, and then the entire city.
A Positive Energy District, through its dynamic, increases your capacity for action in favour of the transition: you are no longer alone in facing the transition and PEB requirements. You also become a participant in a collective project that takes place where you live or work.
Every individual action - insulating your home, adjusting your heating, participating in an energy community - remains important. But it is now part of a larger project, at the neighbourhood level, where it benefits others as much as it contributes.
Moving to the neighbourhood level does not mean abandoning your energy destiny to distant actors. It means being able to act together, with more resources and support. The City, operators and associations are there to help you integrate your individual choices into a coherent project that benefits households, the neighbourhood and the energy transition.
A Positive Energy District isn't just built with cables, pipes and solar panels: it's built with each and every one of you, your habits, your desires and your ideas. Every individual action counts, but it's at the neighbourhood level that real change can happen. The transition is a long-term adventure, but it starts now.
If you live, are active or work in the PED, you will soon be able to initiate, join or participate in projects and info sessions.
In the meantime, stay informed: sign up for the newsletter to follow the progress of the PED strategy, learn about important milestones and discover upcoming opportunities to participate.
