Carbon Neutral Innovation: Helsinki’s Hot Heart Urban Heating Solution
Cities have a key role to play in addressing the most crucial challenge of our time: climate change. One Nordic city, Helsinki, attacked this issue head-on with an innovative carbon-free heating solution.
To engage the most forward-thinking partners from around the world in its pursuit for sustainability, Helsinki launched an Energy Challenge, aimed at decarbonizing the city’s urban heating infrastructure, more than half of which is powered by coal.
Among the winning proposals in Helsinki’s Energy Challenge was the Hot Heart concept. The system functions like a giant thermal battery: renewable energy is converted into heat, stored in the basins and withdrawn through the city’s heat distribution channels during the winter. Schneider Electric plays a key role in the automatization of the AI-based thermal storage system.
The approach is scalable and can be applied to cities around the world.