Gossau Commercial Park
Net-zero commercial park — 75% CO₂ reduction
75% CO₂ reduction. 20% lower lifecycle cost. A commercial park that outperforms its baseline on every dimension.
A net-zero commercial site at 20% lower lifecycle cost than the conventional reference design.
- Customer
- Gossau Commercial Park
- Sector
- Real Estate
- Location
- Gossau, Switzerland
- Project type
- Commercial site net-zero design
- CO₂
- −75%
- Cost
- −20% lifecycle cost vs reference
- Tools
- Sympheny · MILP optimisation · Reference-to-target comparison · Pareto comparison
Photo: Stadt Gossau / stadtgossau.ch
Design a net-zero energy concept for a commercial park in Gossau, Switzerland, meeting decarbonisation targets without increasing lifecycle costs.
Full multi-energy system optimisation — modelling heating, cooling, electricity, and storage configurations across the site.
75% CO₂ reduction and 20% lower lifecycle cost vs. the reference design identified. The result demonstrates that decarbonisation does not require a cost premium when the full energy system is optimised together.
The challenge
Design a net-zero energy concept for a commercial park in Gossau, Switzerland, meeting decarbonisation targets without increasing lifecycle costs.
Commercial sites typically face a trade-off: decarbonisation pathways that hit aggressive CO₂ targets often raise lifecycle costs compared with a conventional reference design. The Gossau team needed to test whether a fully optimised multi-energy concept could break that trade-off — delivering significant emissions reductions and a lower total cost of ownership.
How Sympheny was used
Sympheny was used to model the full commercial site energy system end-to-end — heating, cooling, electricity, and storage configurations evaluated together rather than as separate calculations. Reference and net-zero variants were optimised on the same underlying demand, technology, and tariff data, so the cost and CO₂ comparison was apples-to-apples.
- Whole-site multi-energy optimisation — Modelled heating, cooling, electricity, and storage as one connected system — letting the optimisation algorithm exploit sector coupling across the whole site.
- Reference-to-target comparison — Optimised both the conventional reference design and the net-zero target design on the same demand and tariff assumptions — making the 75% CO₂ and 20% cost figures directly comparable.
- Cost and CO₂ together, not in sequence — Trade-offs between life-cycle cost and emissions surfaced in one Pareto comparison — so the recommendation reflects the full system, not a series of point estimates.
Result
75% CO₂ reduction and 20% lower lifecycle cost vs. the reference design identified. The result demonstrates that decarbonisation does not require a cost premium when the full energy system is optimised together.
The configuration arrived at by the optimisation pairs the right mix of on-site generation, conversion, and storage at the right capacities — sized against real hourly demand on the site rather than rules of thumb. The same model can be re-run as tariff and technology assumptions evolve, so the decision-grade evidence stays current.
75% CO₂ reduction and 20% lower lifecycle cost vs. the conventional reference design — demonstrating that decarbonisation does not require a cost premium when the full energy system is optimised together.