Stimulating regional renewable energy planning in Espoo with an application based on Open Data

Abstract

Objectives set by the European Union of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and improving energy efficiency in buildings necessitate rapid changes in energy production and distribution business in the near future. Finland, as a member of the EU, is bound to these objectives and has been adjusting requirements for new buildings accordingly. As a result, new buildings are required to use significantly less energy than before, and if the current trend continues, it will also become mandatory for buildings to produce some of their own energy. For these reasons, new solutions for energy production, distribution and demand-supply matching are necessary.

It has been the purpose of this Master’s Thesis to explore and develop improved solutions for creating local and regional energy plans in a way that is required in the new regulatory environment. This thesis work has been done in the context of Espoo City, which is the second largest city and municipality in Finland and is part of the Capital Region.

It is part of the Environment and Climate Strategy of Espoo to increase local renewable en-ergy production and to include regional energy plans in the city planning process. As energy production and distribution solutions cannot be directly controlled by the city, it is the role of Espoo to enable and facilitate the use of such planning practices that steer development into a favorable direction in the long run.

In order to evaluate local energy production potential, adequate reference information is required. For this reason, Espoo City Planning Department has commissioned a number of surveys. During 2012 solar energy production potential of all rooftops in Espoo was simulated, and a map of geothermal energy production potential was created.

In this thesis, it has been demonstrated how available data can be combined and used to-gether, and how the seemingly complicated energy planning issue can be made more ap-proachable – for both citizens and planning professionals. As a result, Espoo’s energy map material has been published as open data and web-based application has been developed, demonstrating an interactive way of creating local and regional energy plans.

In order to make it possible for as many parties as possible to participate in the project, the development has been performed in a completely open way. All data used by the application has been publicly available, development of the application has been openly documented, tools and resources used in the development have been freely available, and the results have been published as Open Source.

First version of the application was launched in December 2012. Relevance and success of the project has been evaluated based on the attention it has received and the impact it has created.

The online application has been further developed by Espoo City, and improved version has been published approximately one year after the first version, in early 2014.