The “Greenpark Berlin” project is one of the capital’s most high-profile and rapidly implemented housing and regeneration projects. It is being developed on a site steeped in history in Berlin-Neukölln (the Britz district) and is regarded as a prime example of the combination of industrial prefabrication, affordable housing and forward-looking green energy.
The site was home to the ‘Blub’ (Berliner Luft- und Badeparadies), which opened in 1985 and was once Berlin’s largest water park. Following its closure in 2002, the ruins gradually became a nationally renowned ‘lost place’ over the course of two decades, falling into disrepair due to vandalism and fires, before being completely demolished to make way for the ‘Greenpark’.
Just under 900 flats have been under construction in the new neighbourhood since 2024. The wastewater heat recovery system at Greenpark Berlin (Buschkrugallee, Berlin-Britz) is characterised by very high thermodynamic efficiency and system integration.
Over a system length of 236 metres, our Therm-Liner modules extract a total of approximately 340 kW from the wastewater and make this available for heat supply via a heat pump. As the temperature of the municipal wastewater remains stable at between 10°C and 15°C even on the coldest days, and given the small temperature difference to the low-temperature heating circuits (underfloor heating in the residential units), the heat pump system operates with a COP of approximately 4.0 to 4.23. This means that over 4 kWh of useful heat is generated from a single kilowatt-hour of electricity.
Reversible functionality: Highly efficient summer cooling
A key efficiency benefit at Greenpark is its two-way functionality (heating and cooling):
In summer, heat is extracted from the communal areas (fitness centre, co-working spaces, lounges) and flats and transferred back to the flowing sewer water via heat exchangers.
This is achieved with minimal electricity consumption and alleviates the microclimate, as no hot exhaust air needs to be released into the neighbourhood’s ambient air via conventional recooling systems.
The overall efficiency of the neighbourhood is maximised through the combination of a wastewater heat pump and photovoltaic systems:
Full-surface PV systems are installed on the roofs of the Greenpark. The green electricity generated there directly covers a significant proportion of the power required to run the heat pumps and circulation pumps, thereby maximising the primary energy balance and CO₂ savings.
As a result, Greenpark Berlin uses this technology to achieve a highly efficient, almost entirely decarbonised base-load supply that meets the demanding KfW 40 standard, without having to use up space on the 3.5-hectare site for geothermal drilling fields.
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