Europe Week in Middelburg

Municipality of Middelburg, our partner in the SHIFFT project, has organized a ‘Europe Week’ from November 18th untill 29th 2019. The municipality wanted to bring Europe and Interreg to the attention of its inhabitants (over 50,000) in a positive way.

In recent years many projects have been realized in the municipality of Middelburg. It involves many different projects throughout the municipality.

A lot of money is needed to realize these projects. Because European subsidies were available for these projects, they have been realized or are currently being implemented.

Also SHIFFT was presented. In the municipality of Middelburg, houses, offices and buildings will be disconnected from the natural gas network and heated in a different way in the coming years as well.

The government wants to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. The CO2 emissions from the heating of homes have to be 0 in 2050. The European SHIFFT project is in line with these national and municipal objectives.

Within this project, Middelburg is collaborating with knowledge partners and cities such as Bruges and Mechelen on their own municipal vision ‘Heat’. This policy document specifies for each neighborhood how and when a neighborhood will be made more sustainable. Together with residents and stakeholders, an implementation plan is developed at the neighborhood level. This provides a framework for homeowners, network managers, heating companies and municipalities to make investment decisions.