In 1990 Finland became the first country in the world to establish a carbon tax. Now, 20 years later, SITRA and Finland will demonstrate to the world a bold solution for cities and how they can address climate change.Sitra, the Finnish innovation fund and development partners, SRV and VVO today announce a €60m investment for a low carbon housing and commercial building complex in Helsinki.

Work on the development will begin immediately, with completion scheduled for the end of 2012. Through the project, Sitra aims to generate research and evidence that will inform the policy, innovation and practices that will drive future low – and no – carbon development in the built environment.

The announcement follows Sitra’s Low2No competition that challenged five teams shortlisted from an initial 75 to design a building complex for Jätkäsaari, a reclaimed goods harbour to the west of central Helsinki.

The competition was won in September 2009 by an international team led by global design, engineering and planning firm, Arup, providing engineering and sustainability services. The team also includes Berlin-based Sauerbruch Hutton as lead architects and consumer behaviour-change strategists Experientia from Italy.

The building complex covers 22,000 square metres and will provide new residences, office and retail space. Emissions will be reduced through building design and performance, mobility systems and food production. The competition-winning design for the development centred on four objectives:

Building energy efficiency – better performing buildings will be designed, with an appropriate mix of end-uses and through the intelligent planning of the spaces between them. Energy demand management tools and techniques such as smart meters and behavioural change prompts will encourage residents to contribute reduce energy consumption.

Use of sustainable materials and methods – sustainably-sourced timber and materials which have a lower impact on the environment (in terms of toxicity and embodied carbon) will be used.

Encouraging the community to meet sustainability goals – by increasing their awareness and understanding of the impact of their energy and transport usage, food and consumer goods consumption.

Develop replicable and scalable solutions that can be adopted more broadly in transforming the built environment to low - and eventually - no carbon emissions. These objectives will be met by coupling solutions with an increased shift towards renewable energy production and new sustainable funding mechanisms.

“Finland has committed to reducing its CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050. With this project Sitra encourages cities and the real estate and building industry to tackle these ambitious goals in their projects.

Sustainability is more than just energy efficiency. We seek new solutions for improving energy efficiency, new content for defining and understanding sustainability in building, as well as social innovations,” says Jukka Noponen, Executive Director of Sitra’s Energy Programme.

”Low2No City Block in Jätkäsaari is an important step towards sustainable development. The new marine districts, reclaimed harbour areas offer possibilities for a wide introduction of new solutions, says Deputy Mayor Hannu Penttilä who is responsible for urban planning at the City of Helsinki.

”SRV aims at differentiating as a forerunner in sustainable construction. Low2No is an excellent example of our long-term commitment and efforts. The project team contains top experts both internationally and from Finland. This is well in line with our SRV Approach, which allows us to always seek the best partners for each project, comments Timo Nieminen, Senior Executive Vice President and Deputy CEO of SRV Group.

“VVO Group has been persistent in pursuing the goals set for energy saving in existing building stock and new buildings. This development project in Jätkäsaari builds straightforward on our consistent work on this and will help in keeping VVO ahead in the forefront of this transition. The site location is excellent, offering us an opportunity to build cost-efficient rental apartments, subsidised by the state, in the vicinity of the city centre – and near the sea”, states Esa Kankainen, Project Director at VVO.

“Defining implementable and replicable sustainable solutions is one of the great challenges of our times. We are thrilled that the transitional strategy defined by the Low2No vision has found an implementation framework to carry it into the world. Guided by a strong sense of a common mission the design and development team’s partnership is a real accomplishment. It is now our obligation to deliver on the promise we have captured, and this opportunity excites and motivates all of us to transform the notion of “business as usual” “ comments Marco Steinberg, Director of Strategic Design at Sitra.

“In 1990, Finland became the first country in the world to establish a carbon tax. This ambitious project provides us with a unique opportunity to show how urban design can influence inhabitants to live more sustainably, in balance with the environment. Our design approach will allow the community to become carbon negative within 10 years, providing decision makers, developers and planners across the world with an example of how future environmental challenges can be met”, comments Alejandro Gutierrez, consortium manager at Arup.

“Sustainable developments need a holistic approach within which architecture will play a leading part. As sustainable buildings are dependent upon the cooperation of their users to develop their full potential, they will need to seduce their inhabitants into a proactive role through the pleasure of space, light and material that they offer”, says Matthias Sauerbruch at Sauerbruch Hutton.

“People, their contexts, social networks, habits and beliefs are crucial tools for creating sustainable change in behaviour. We will therefore offer people ways to control their consumption and see the affects of their actions on the environment”, comments Jan-Christoph Zoels, project lead at Experientia.

http://www.low2no.org/now/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Low2No%20Manual%20Arup.pdf

http://www.low2no.org/now/c_life/

"BedZED is perhaps the most influential of all housing projects this century" - UK Solar Awards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFrqRJbCmIQ&feature=player_embedded

The Beddington Zero Energy Development, or BedZED, is the UK's largest eco-village. The One Planet Communities program is based upon lessons learned in designing, building, and operaitng BedZED. Creating green neighborhoods is a learning process for most real estate developers - the One Planet Communities program helps transfer knowledge about what worked and what didn't at BedZED to the next generation of sustainable communities.

The multi-award winning development is one of the most coherent examples of sustainable living in the UK.

Initiated by BioRegional, BedZED was developed by the Peabody Trust in partnership with BioRegional Development Group and designed by Bill Dunster Architects.

Located in Wallington, South London, BedZED comprises 100 homes, community facilities and workspace for 100 people. Residents have been living at BedZED since March 2002.

BedZED makes a sustainable lifestyle easy, attractive and affordable. BedZED challenges conventional approaches to housing by tackling sustainability in every area from the outset. It slashes heat, electricity and water demand, eliminating the need for space heating and reducing water consumption by a third. It has designed facilities and services that make it easy to reduce waste to landfill, recycle waste and reduce car use.

SOME BEDZED SUCCESSES

Electricity consumption on average 58% less than London average (saves over 0.4 tons of CO2 emissions per person every year)

Using renewable fuels to generate heat and power at BedZED saves:
538 Tons of CO2 a year from the biomass Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP)
52 Tons of CO2 a year from installed PV
C02 Saving = 2.7 Tons per resident
Average BedZED resident uses 87 liters less water per day
83% of all timber was either reclaimed or FSC certified
Nearly 100% of structural steel was locally reclaimed, saving 82 Tons of embodied CO2

http://www.oneplanetcommunities.org/BedZED/

***

Stockholm Presents Green Future, Today

A plus two-degree world of sorts already exists. It is in Hammarby Sjöstad, a part of Stockholm, and life there shows that we shouldn't be afraid of this world. Positive climate protection is possible. It results from a mixture of intelligent technology and climate-conscious behavior.

The Tiljas -- Henrik, Asa-Viktoria and their young daughter Doris -- live in this world. They haven't had a car in a long time, and they eat organic food. In addition, for the past year they have been living in a stylish, 68-square-meter (732-square-foot), all-white apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad. "We are responsible for only 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person," says Henrik Tilja, "which almost puts us at the level of people in a developing country." Using sophisticated environmental technology, city planners have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by almost 40 percent, and yet residents and visitors notice virtually none of the related measures.


The community produces its own gas and heat through a local sewage treatment plant. There is also an ampere meter that can display, minute-by-minute, how much electricity each consumer is using. The knowledge of how to influence one's own power use has reduced consumption by 40 percent. Natural waste produced by residents is also converted into biogas, which in turn powers local busses.

"The gas we use here," says his wife Asa-Viktoria, as she places a teakettle on the stovetop, "is organic." It comes from the city's nearby sewage treatment plant. In a sedimentation tank created by blasting a hole deep into the bedrock, digested sludge ferments and produces methane gas, which the public utility company then pumps into the Hammarby gas network.

Some of the energy the Tiljas use to heat their apartment comes from the residual heat a heat exchanger extracts from the sewage they produce. There is also an ampere meter that can display, minute-by-minute, how much electricity each individual consumer is using. Merely the knowledge of how to influence one's own power use has reduced consumption by 40 percent. "The idea is that people have to be rewarded for environmentally conscious behavior," says Henrik Tilja.

On the nearby playground, four large pipes with flaps on top protrude from the ground next to the sandbox. The pipes are for trash disposal, separated by category, from organic waste to paper. But unlike places with conventional waste disposal systems, there are no sweating garbage collectors and stinking garbage trucks in Hammarby, because vacuum pumps suction off the waste at speeds of 70 kilometers per hour (44 mph). This saves energy and has resulted in an astonishingly disciplined populace when it comes to separating waste. Close to 100 percent of organic waste can be converted into biogas, which powers the buses in Hammarby.

Part of the reason Stockholm as a whole has a relatively small environmental footprint is that 40 percent of its electricity comes from hydroelectric power and 40 percent from nuclear energy. "But none of what is being done here can't be implemented elsewhere," says Ulla Hamilton, the deputy mayor in charge of Stockholm's environmental affairs. According to Hamilton, the investment costs were only two to four percent higher than those for a normal new neighborhood.

A 'CO2-Postive' Neighborhood


Hammarby Sjöstad, an urban redevelopment project in Stockholm, Sweden, is a model of the steps that can be taken to help prevent global warming of greater than 2 degrees Celsius. Families living here produce only 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person, almost the level of a developing country. It also boasts fantastic modern architecture.

Planners at city hall are already working on a second Hammarby, a neighborhood in the city's northeast called Royal Seaport, where ferries depart for Finland and the Baltic countries, and where the Swedish capital's oil tanks and gas storage units are located.

Construction is scheduled to begin next year on a residential and commercial neighborhood that will be "CO2 positive." In other words, it will actually serve as a net consumer of carbon dioxide. To achieve this goal, the houses will have to produce 30 percent of the electricity they consume. More importantly, however, they will only be able to consume 55 kilowatt hours of energy per square meter.

Tomas Gustafsson, the chief planner, used to advise government agencies in China, Vietnam and Thailand on how to build cities that don't make their residents sick.

Gustafsson, who now works for the city of Stockholm, and Deputy Mayor Hamilton have hired the electronics company ABB to build a so-called smart grid for the Royal Seaport project. In this system, the electric meter for each house is connected online with the electricity supplier. This allows it to report house-specific information to the central office, such as that a given family's electric car has to be fully charged by 7 a.m. the next morning. The central office then determines the best time to charge the vehicle.

The computer also controls the washing machine, so that it only runs at night, when electricity costs are the lowest. "As a result, some of the peak current is removed from the grid when consumption is high," says Gustafsson. If capacity utilization is distributed more evenly, fewer power plants are needed.

"The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to behave in an environmentally friendly way," says Gustafsson. His boss, Ulla Hamilton, agrees: "We have to take away their fear that protecting the climate means climbing back into the trees."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,665771-3,00.html

(Picture Gallery) http://community.livejournal.com/sustainable_sos/tag/hammarby-model
(Article Translated in Chinese) http://financenews.sina.com/singtao/000-000-107-103/201/2009-12-14/0610498161.shtml


---
Related Links:

Eco Debt: West Dorset UK (Part II & IV)
Part II
Lyme Regis' Town Mill is now run on hydropower. It shows the Mill's renovation and why a Dorset village turned to straw bales to build sustainable homes that are also affordable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DLBpqmPF8U&feature=channel
Part IV
Join a recycling rickshaw in Bridport and hear how it helps recycle four tonnes of waste material every week, including waste vegetable oil. Their idea has reduced Bridport's carbon dioxide emissions by 70 tonnes in two and a half years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b7Gf3Qw0VY&feature=channel

8-80 Cities
http://8-80cities.org/

It was a great pleasure to have finally visited Hammarby this past summer, people have always said that "a picture worths a thousand words". So here I am, posting some of the field pictures with a hope to inspire more people in building sustainable communities. ~ V.Kam

http://pics.livejournal.com/ecastleinthesky/gallery/00004ey5

-----------------------------

Hammarby, an old district of industrial docks, is on the verge of transforming itself into a closed-system eco-town...

Hammarby-Sjostad, one of the vastest projects of development of the municipality of Stockholm, a strong control of town planning and environment, an architecture with vocation symbolic system of modernity, an environmental program which wants to be exemplary, the eco-cycle or “Hammarby-model”. ( Read more... )