The planned investment will include a heat pump plant and an increase in the capacity of the existing district heating network. The heat pump plant receives waste heat from a data centre and converts it into district heat. The capacity increase of the existing district heating network allows the transferring of heat from a data-centre to the city centre. The intended measures include a pre-feasibility study and development of an investment plan (engineering consultancy company, sourced via public tendering process) and a pre-feasibility study on a heat pump plant. There will be the required revisions to the existing district heating network to receive waste heat from a data centre. The technical solutions studied will represent BAT technology. In addition, there will be activities such as project coordination, reporting and communication activities, relations to project partners and stakeholders and tendering and management of purchasing services procurement.
This project is essentially about the optimisation of the current energy infrastructure. District heating covers over 70 % of the residential heating requirements in the Cityof Tampere, which makes it a vital part of the emission reduction potential. In 2022, the biomass-fired power plant “Naistenlahti 3” is to be completed by the local energy provider, Tamperee Sähkölaitos. As a result, the local district heating production will run on biomass, natural gas and municipal waste. To achieve the city’s objective of becoming carbon neutralby 2030, this investment concept includes carbon capture in Naistenlahti 3 and a connected Power-to-X system to turn the part of the captured CO2 into synthetic fuels. Synthetic fuel can replace natural gas in peak-load boilers to help meet the heat demand in winter sustainably, and in transportation to replace fossil fuels in heavy vehicles. The Power-to-X process creates a lot of excess heat, which is captured to replace waste incineration and heat-only biomass boilers.
Currently, there is a large battery manufacturing ground being developed near the Vaasa airport, called GigaVaasa (https://www.gigavaasa.fi). The total acreage reserved for the two first actors is about 140 hectares, which would be good for about 100,000 battery units for electric vehicles annually. The plan is to use a quarry that is no longer in use as a combined heat storage and process water pit. The quarry is about 3 kilometers away from the actual area that is producing and further using, most of the stored heat. The quarry is to be covered in its entirety with a floating, isolated cover that allows expansion and minimises aeration. The storage volume of the quarry pit altogether would be 1.2 million cubic meters. By utilising this volume and one cycle per year, the actors of the city of Vaasa would avoid annually the production of about 53 GWh, which would further equal a reduction of 42.870 tons of CO2 equivalent.