Energy prices and a new contract
In recent years we have had to deal a lot with increased energy costs. We have informed you about this regularly, through the newsletter, but also through conversations with the property.
For the past year we have had a new energy contract for all properties (except where tenants are responsible for it themselves). We have this contract for three years, with fixed prices. These are prices that are considerably lower than what we paid for them - that gives a lot of peace of mind. Incidentally, that contract started as of August 2023, and we only received the bill from the energy company last September. That means that for some of the properties the service costs are later.
Additional costs not passed on
Just last year we received an additional charge from the old energy company of over €300,000. That came on top of the amounts we had to pay extra before. We did not have to pass that on to the tenants, thanks to emergency support from the Municipality. We are very happy with that. In previous years, too, we paid part of the energy costs ourselves and did not pass them on. For the coming years, that is not necessary. Moreover, that can't be out of the question either.
Altogether, that was a lot of money (over four tons) that the tenants did not have to contribute. Because we did get the bills, we had to economize. For the coming years we will focus our attention on making the buildings more sustainable. We can spend the money better if the costs for energy can rise less steeply.
How fast are energy costs rising?
We regularly compare the costs we now incur on energy per building with those of previous years. Consumption, especially of gas, has not changed significantly since 2016. Over the past two years, we even see a decrease. The bill we got for it did increase: compared to 2016, prices have now (almost) doubled. If you consider that inflation in that period combined is about 30 percent, we can conclude from it that in eight years the cost of energy has increased more than three times. Hopefully this will slow down in the future, but we can be sure that energy will only get more expensive.
Preserve
That is why we are going to make it more sustainable. We want to do this together with you, guided by architectural firm Superuse. We have started a pilot for this in three buildings; we wrote this post about it earlier. We will continue to inform you about this.