Carbon neutral district heating in Espoo in the 2020s
Espoo Clean HeatEspoo Clean Heat
Fortum and the City of Espoo, Finland, have committed to carbon-neutral district heating during the 2020s in the network that operates in the Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi regions. The development work has since been accelerated with an intermediate goal to discontinue the use of coal in 2025. The project for carbon-neutrality in 2020's is called Espoo Clean Heat.
The new generation of district heating will be based on replacing fossil fuels with smart and flexible solutions such as excess heat utilisation, renewable electricity, heat pumps, electric boilers and bioenergy. Artificial intelligence will optimise the operations of the whole district heating system.
Examples of our clean energy projects
mid-2020's (est): Recycling waste heat from Microsoft's data centres
More and more data centres are needed to accommodate digitalisation and increasing data volumes. It makes sense to locate big data centres in places where the waste heat from the cooling of servers can be captured and transferred to district heating customers on a large scale. This creates substantial climate benefits.
2021: The new heat pump unit in Suomenoja
The new 25 MW unit was built in the Suomenoja heat pump facility. Similarly to the other units, the new unit will use the excess heat from treated waste water, as well as sea water in the summer. The unit was commissioned in 2021. The facility will increase the share of carbon-neutral production to 50% in 2022.
2020: New bio-heating facility in Kivenlahti
The new biomass-fired 49 megawatt heating plant was commissioned in the spring 2020 next to the existing Kivenlahti facility, where two wood pellet boilers already produce district heat. The new facility replaced one of the two remaining coal-fired units in the Suomenoja power plant. The commissioning of the facility increased the share of carbon-neutral district heating in Espoo to 40%.
Share of carbon neutral district heating in Espoo (forecast)
Additional information about Espoo Clean Heat
Timo Kivi
Head of Sales
Heating and Cooling Finland
Tel: +358 400 615 700
timo [dot] kivi [at] fortum [dot] com
Heikki Keskiväli
Manager, Strategic Projects
Heating and Cooling Finland
heikki [dot] keskivali [at] fortum [dot] com