FORTUM CORPORATION PRESS RELEASE 13.11.2018
Fortum has signed an agreement to purchase the excess heat from Lidl’s Järvenpää distribution centre. Fortum opened its district heating network to clean heat producers in spring 2018. A large share of the district heating in the Järvenpää and Tuusula region is already carbon dioxide-free.
The Lidl distribution centre in Järvenpää will produce about 700 MWh of heat annually for Fortum’s district heating network in the Järvenpää region. The amount is equivalent to the annual heating needs of more than 40 single-family homes.
“Climate change is one of the toughest challenges human kind has faced. To tackle the challenge, we are committed to our goal to fully transition to carbon-neutral district heat production during the 2020s. In the transition to a sustainable, efficient and smart energy system, we are investing particularly in production methods that are not combustion-based, methods like the use of excess heat and geothermal heat,” says Fortum’s Ilkka Toijala, Head of Heating and Cooling, Finland.
Fortum is already efficiently utilising the excess heat generated by various sources. The company has several major customers that feed the excess heat generated at their buildings and in other operations to Fortum’s open district heating network. Households connected to Fortum’s district heating networks are heated with the excess heat generated by data centres, buildings, industrial facilities, wastewater treatment plants, and logistics centres, among others. This excess heat has never before been recovered in this or any other way.
The agreement with Lidl is the first agreement signed using the public procurement prices for excess heat.
“During summer we get plenty of energy from our own solar power plant, but it is also used to cool the distribution centre’s refrigerated areas. We can transfer the condensate heat generated in conjunction with the cooling into the district heating network for everyone to use; nothing gets wasted. Utilising and recycling excess heat is very much in alignment with our ambitious energy targets,” says Virpi Kaikkonen, Director of Properties and Development at Lidl Finland.
Fortum Corporation
Group Communications
Further information:
Ilkka Toijala, Head of Heating and Cooling, Finland, Fortum, tel. +358 40 820 2336
Lidl Suomi Ky, Communications, +358 9 2345 6400, media [at] lidl [dot] fi (media[at]lidl[dot]fi)
Fortum
Fortum is a leading clean-energy company that provides its customers with electricity, heating and cooling as well as smart solutions to improve resource efficiency. We want to engage our customers and society to join the change for a cleaner world. We employ some 9,000 professionals in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Russia, Poland and India. In 2017, our sales were EUR 4.5 billion and 61% of our electricity generation was CO2 free. Fortum’s share is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.