Where history and presence lead into a smart future

Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has a population of over 626,300 inhabitants and greater Helsinki does even count up to 1.4 million. Helsinki is Finland´s major political, educational, financial, cultural and research centre as well as one of northern Europe´s major cities.

More liveable space for more residents

In large cities such as Cologne, heat generation accounts for more than two-thirds of stationary energy consumption. This is why it is necessary to consider ways to make more efficient use of non-fossil energy sources and create more sustainable heating systems in metropolitan areas. One idea is to recover heat from wastewater systems that is currently simply flushed away.

The city of Genoa is one of the first Italian cities to commit to the implementation and promotion of the smart city holistic approach and has invested efforts into involving diverse stakeholders to work together with the objective of making a real change in sustainability. 

Gothenburg took part in the CELSIUS project with several fields of action focusing on the construction of 900 new apartments, which are to be connected to the district heating system and used as small short-term thermal storage, for connecting ships to the district heating system when docked in the harbour, and for feeding cold water from the river into the district cooling network.

A mid-tunnel ventilation shaft on the London Underground and a UK Power Network electricity substation were identified as sources of waste heat that could be used to supply heat to Islington Council’s Bunhill Heat and Power heat network. As part of the CELSIUS project, Islington investigated how these sources of waste heat could be captured and integrated into the network.

The city of Rotterdam participated in the CELSIUS project with a focus on two interventions: development of an energy system in the vertical city of De Rotterdam and the creation of a heat hub aiming to increase the effectiveness of the waste heat transportation network.

The city of Brescia in northern Italy is part of the PITAGORAS project, which aims to develop highly replicable, cost-effective and high energy-efficient large-scale energy generation systems that will allow the sustainable urban planning of very-low-energy city districts. The project’s concept for waste heat recovery system is demonstrated in a real-scale pilot plant.

*Disclaimer: The pilot plant proposed to be installed at the demo site of Kremsmünster (Austria) is no longer planned. Although the oil and gas company in which the pilot plant was going to be built confirmed their interest on the solar project and the main aspects on the heat delivery contract were in fact agreed between the ESCO (Energy Service Company) and the company, they decided to stop all new projects in face of the current decline of oil price.