The city of Helsinki wants to extract energy from cold water from deep in the Baltic Sea to heat homes.
The Finnish capital aims in this way to become less dependent on imported fossil fuels, using a new, carbon-neutral heating system, according to the Bloomberg financial news agency.
The city’s energy utility, Helen Oy, is partnering with Spanish construction firm Acciona and local infrastructure company YIT Oyj to build a tunnel to draw water from the sea floor, where it has a constant temperature.
By sending the water through underground heat pumps, the system can generate enough heat to serve 40% of the Finnish capital.
Today, most homes in Helsinki are heated through a system that relies heavily on coal and natural gas to produce both heat and power. In 2021, fossil fuels accounted for more than 75% of the city's heat production.
The seawater project should become an important step in Helsinki's transition to renewable energy and achieving its goal of carbon neutrality, quite a challenge for a city in a cold climate with high heat demand.
The electricity needed to power the heat pumps in the seawater project will come from renewable and nuclear energy. The project has a price tag of €400 million and will take two years in a development phase. It will then take another five years before the infrastructure, with a capacity of 500 MW, will be ready for use.
The project would become the largest of its kind in the world.
In summer, the system could also be used to cool homes.
