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These floating islands could help decarbonize Helsinki

By District Energy posted 03-19-2021 15:58

  

Fast Company

Summary

By 2035, the city of Helsinki plans to be carbon neutral. But in a part of the world where the average winter temperature is a few degrees below freezing, one challenge of reaching that goal is heating hundreds of thousands of homes without using fossil fuels (or burning wood, which the city doesn’t see as a long-term solution). Because the city recognized a need for new innovations in heating technology, it sponsored a 1 million euro reward, the Helsinki Energy Challenge, for anyone who could come up with a viable alternative.

One of the competition’s winners, called Helsinki’s Hot Heart, envisions 10 floating reservoirs off the city’s coast that would store heat in seawater—and double as greenhouses with hot pools that residents can visit in February when the weather outside is bleak.

Water efficiently stores heat, and this type of thermal storage “has been used before, but never at this unprecedented scale,” says designer Carlo Ratti, founder of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati, which developed the proposal. “Also, the concept of floating reservoirs is new and could be a game-changer. It could theoretically be used in any coastal city—facing the sea, lakes, or rivers.”

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#Helsinki
#DistrictHeating
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