Co2mmunity project’s Uusimaa RENCOP– expert group had it’s third face-to-face meeting in Helsinki on 27 February 2019. In the meeting, a group of 11 experts continued discussions on issues related to holistic sustainable approach in development of renewable energy systems for communal housing in Uusimaa region. The represented parties at the meeting were Green Net Finland ry, Aalto University, Climate Info unit of HSY, Finnish Environmental Centre SYKE &University of Tampere, Utuapu Oy, Finnish Heat Pumps Association SULPU, EsaaS Oy and Solarvoima Oy.

Altogether the Uusimaa RENCOP at this moment involves 34 experts – diversely representing local public authorities, academia sector and businesses, providing services and technologies for renewable energy and/or community energy projects.

The main outlines from the discussions are:

  • Acceptance by share owners of a housing company of communal residential building (which is the most common ownership arrangement in Finland) can be achieved easily, if investment into solar PV system will be presented at the general meeting of share owners together with investment into heat pump system. For example, for a typical block of flats located at downtown of Helsinki, the ratio of investments in solar PV-geothermal heat pump hybrid system is approximately 1 to 10, respectively. For example, this corresponds to 30 000 € for a solar PV system and 300 000 € for a geothermal heat pump system.
  • In a two-way energy concept (i.e., when energy is self-produced and consumed by a housing company) it should be considered that the selling of energy from the self produced energy is taxed and the company must register to the tax authority as a VAT payer. The fee for this registering of tax payments or managing costs of VAT-arrangements for housing company of one small building is remarkably bigger than the expected profit from selling of surplus of generated on-site solar electricity. For example, the housing company will get from energy grid company about 0,03 – 0,05 € price for the sold generated on-site solar electricity and the managing costs for VAT-arrangements is about 700 €.
  • A draft of publication prepared by GNF on energy balance management in a typical block of flats building in Southern Finland by property-specific solar PV and ground source heat pump hybrid system (“Eteläisen Suomen kerrostaloyhtiön ostoenergian taseen hallinta kiinteistökohtaisella maalämpö- ja aurinkosähköhybridijärjestelmällä”) was presented and comments or suggestions to it were kindly requested.
  • Experts are presented implemented community energy projects in housing companies and were agreed that a few of them will be formed as case studies for Co2mmunity project.
  • Was agreed to make collaboration with ongoing CORE -project, which is part of the SRC programme “Changing society and active citizenship”. Solving complex societal problems requires specific collaboration skills. Finnish Environmental Centre SYKE’s expert in Uusimaa RENCOP will collaborate with GNF on the issue of involving citizens share owners of housing companies into community energy projects.
  • Was discussed the main objective of Uusimaa expert RENCOP – to create till the end of the Co2mmunity project comparative analysing tool for property-specific renewable energy generation system. This Co2mmunity energy system analysing tool is supposed to be a neutral basement for dialog between all parties in community energy projects – citizens or share owners in housing companies (owners of majority decision-making power), turn-key solution providers, energy companies (in case of grid-connected property-specific energy systems) and possible energy-as-a-services (ESCO, EPC, leasing)  providing companies.

 

The next face-to-face meeting of the Uusimaa RENCOP is planned for April-May 2019. Then we will connect site-visits to selected implemented renewable community energy projects in Helsinki.

GNF is welcoming new experts to Uusimaa RENCOP!