Smart building comes naturally to Finns
As the EU country with the northernmost building stock and the highest need for heating in continental Europe, efficient constructions are more of a necessity than an alternative in Finland. To optimise the energy use and the costs without compromises in comfort the Finnish companies have developed a wide range of smart solutions including renewable energy production and IoT innovations. A selection of these companies are now visiting Amsterdam (5-7 June) to display their latest solutions.
Finland and the Netherlands are both countries with highly developed markets for modern building. The similar business cultures have fuelled the benchmarking of each other’s expertise and with the current delegation of Finnish companies visiting Amsterdam, Business Finland’s Smart Buildings program hope to further boost the co-operation with the fastest growing construction sector in Europe.
“There are great opportunities to learn from each other and the Finnish expertise can offer solutions to the country’s current challenges with CO2 emissions,” says the program manager Petri Lintumäki.
Reducing the harmful emissions is one of the government’s most important goals and a close to zero target has been set for 2050. A significant cause to the current CO2 emissions comes from the building sector as 75 % of the heating is still produced with natural gas.
“Replacing the fossil fuel with environment-friendly solutions is a core reason for the interest in smart building and the market actively searches sustainable and energy-efficient solutions that can decrease CO2-emissions. Finns have valuable knowledge of saving energy and if solar energy can be used to generate electricity to Finnish houses it is possible in the Netherlands as well,” says Petra Wullings, owner and senior consultant at Trademill.
What the Finns would do
Smart building companies from Finland answer to the demands with self-sufficient production of renewable energy and smart construction solutions that minimise the energy and water losses. Creating long-term value by lowering the operation costs as well as improving the comfort, service monitoring and security with IoT and intelligent solutions are at the core of the Finnish expertise.
“Green buildings have the best work efficiency, which creates direct economic benefits. Finland is a global leader in creating such high performance buildings as our high needs for lighting and heating have forced us to come up with solutions that enable smart energy use,” says Lintumäki.
“Finland is known here for its technological innovations. When you search for future solutions, the Finnish companies have usually already thought about them,” Wullings adds.
Sustainable energy solutions, IoT monitoring and optimisation
One of the smart companies visiting Amsterdam is Smartvatten seeking to digitalise the now common manual process of water monitoring. The company is eager to join the Smart buildings roadshow to meet the local actors and get hands-on experience from how their product is received by the Dutch.
“We bring old water meters to the digital world with our Smartvatten service which reads the existing water meter in real-time. This helps the property owners to detect leaks in time to minimise the water damages. It also makes reporting smoother and saves time. We are currently providing the service to over 6000 buildings in Europe and we hope to soon be able to show the benefits from our services to property owners and property managers in Netherlands,” says the company’s chief sales officer, Joe Hamari.
Solnet, on the other hand, already has positive experiences from bringing their IoT enabled solar utilities to the Netherlands. The company’s CEO, Arttur Kulvik, highlights the great opportunities of the Dutch projects, which are usually bigger than in Finland.
“The Dutch market has surprised us with a very similar business culture and we have good experiences from creating sales and partner networks through co-operation. Our expertise in system design and efficiency IoT enables has increased real estate owners interest in solar energy as they have realised that it is not just kilowatt-hours from the roof. The cumulative benefits include cost savings, reaching sustainability targets and contributing to buildings LEED and BREEAM certificates just to mention a few,” says Kulvik.
For more information, please contact:
Petri Lintumäki
petri.lintumaki@businessfinland.com
+358403433299
Business Finland is the Finnish innovation funding, trade, investment, and travel promotion organization, headquartered in Helsinki. Business Finland is fully owned by the Finnish Government employing some 600 experts in 40 offices globally and in 20 regional offices around Finland. Business Finland is part of the Team Finland network.www.businessfinland.com
