Google partners with Haminan Energia to set up the first offsite heat recovery project in Finland.
Takeaway Points
- Google partners with Haminan Energia to set up the first offsite heat recovery project in Finland.
- The aim is to reduce the environmental footprint and help warm homes and businesses in Finland.
- Google said it aims to achieve net zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030.
Google and Haminan Energia.
The search engine company Google, in a blog post on Monday, said that, in partnership with city-owned energy provider Haminan Energia, it will begin their first offsite heat recovery project. The aim is to reduce the environmental footprint and help warm homes and businesses in Finland.
The project will provide 80% of the heat demand for Finnish neighborhoods and by 2025, the Hamina data center, situated on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, is going to be both a hub for digital information and a source of sustainable heat for the district, the report stated.
Ilari Soosalu, the mayor of Hamina, said that Google is a good example of a company with a strong, sustainable future.
“Google and the city of Hamina have a long and flourishing history together. Google is an excellent example of a company with strong sustainable future orientation. It feels good to be the hometown of Google in Finland,” IIari said.
Kimmo Rahkamo, CEO of Hamina Energia, said that the partnership is important because it helps the city achieve neutrality goals.
“This partnership is very important both for the residents of the Hamina area and for local energy production, as it helps the city and us to achieve the set carbon neutrality goals. Heat recovery enables the delivery of district heat to new customers as well as the expansion of the network,” says Kimmo.
The offsite heat recovery project
The search engine company said that it will be recovering heat at the Google Hamina data center, which operates today with carbon-free energy at 97%. and the heat coming out of our Finnish data center will be re-directed and provided free of charge to the district heating network in nearby Hamina, covering local households, schools, and public service buildings.
Haminan Energia said that during 2025, the heat generated in the data center will begin to flow into the local district heating network. The warm cooling water received from Google is led to the heat pump plant, where heat pumps raise the temperature to match the district heating network. The 5 MW heat pump plant can produce district heat of 40 GWh/year (40,000,000 kWh/year), which is currently enough to cover 80% of the volume of district heat in Hamina. In order to connect the heat pump plant to the existing district heating network, a new network of approximately 1.3 km will be built.
How is green district heating produced?
Haminan Energia said that the green district heating is produced at the solid fuel plant completed in 2019 along Satamantie. Heat is produced with wood-based fuels. The delivery of district heating has been ensured at several production plants in different parts of Hamina.
Google said it aims to achieve net zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030, and this project helps bring us closer to achieving this goal while also supporting Finland’s long-standing commitment to environmental sustainability and technological innovation.
