At the turn of the year, people often make New Year's resolutions. Individuals buy gym memberships, decide to take up a new hobby, and start studying languages and making the world a better place. These promises often see varying levels of success. But what about corporate promises?
As a company belonging to the City of Turku group, we have made certain promises regarding sustainability. Last summer, we signed a commitment with the City of Turku aimed at reducing emissions, from which we can identify the promises made and review our progress.
A carbon-neutral company?
The commitment includes a promise that our company aims to be carbon neutral by 2029, to the extent possible for a real estate investment company. As time seems to be moving in fast-forward, this goal will not be met through small steps but requires giant leaps. We took one such giant leap at the turn of the year when, starting on 1 January 2025, we switched to using a district heating product from Turku Energia, which produces heat entirely without fossil fuels. Our properties' district heating consumption is roughly 30,000 MWh per year. The agreement we have now made means, calculated, that our annual carbon dioxide emissions will drop by more than a million kilos from the current level!
Easy reporting
Many of our tenants will in the future have to report on their sustainability and calculate their carbon footprints. We are significantly easing their workload, as in the future electricity, district heating, and cooling will all be emission-free. In other words, as our client, emissions related to the premises will be at a minimum. And even though our electricity is entirely wind power, we still aim to increase our self-sufficiency in electricity and have, for instance, mapped out locations for new solar panels.
Can a responsible operator build new premises?
There has been much talk about how building cannot be an environmental act. The most responsible thing would be to do nothing, something that investors and owners might have a word to say about. Another option would be to only repair and maintain the old building stock. Unfortunately, the plots held by Teknologiakiinteistöt and used to meet the needs of a growing city do not really contain any building stock worth preserving. We preserve everything we can, but the recycling rate of old industrial halls built decades ago according to the standards of that time cannot be very high, and in addition, the soil on the plots is often heavily contaminated.
“On an annual basis, our carbon dioxide emissions will fall by more than a million kilograms from the current level.”
In the big picture, Turku is growing, people need homes, and companies need office space. However you look at it, urban and regional development in the Science Park and Itäharju areas requires new construction, and as a company, we are operating in the middle of one of Turku's key projects.
When building new, operators must ensure that growth is achieved as responsibly as possible. As a company, we are committed to this, and we have, for example, built all our latest projects to the highest LEED Platinum standard, ensuring a low carbon footprint for construction and a controlled life cycle for the property. We have even used only wood as a building material in AkvaCity.
A new start as an entrepreneur
Responsible operation also involves an obligation to “help the smaller ones”. Economic times are challenging, and many companies are struggling to stay in business, and some are unable to do so. As a result, there is a large group of educated, long-career experts unemployed, and there are very few job openings available. If you have a laptop and a business idea, and working from home or at the kitchen table is starting to feel cramped, you can start realizing your dream with a low threshold and minimal costs at our Werstas, and initially employ yourself and perhaps later others too. We scale from one-person companies to pharmaceutical plants and everything in between, and in a changing world, you can change with us without moving. We have a few concrete examples that all of this is possible. Everyone needs new ideas, companies, and employers.
Electric cars replacing internal combustion engines
One of the promises we made to the city concerned the Teknologiakiinteistöt vehicle fleet and updating it to be emission-free. In this regard, the situation is not quite “perfect”, but we are close. Out of the six vehicles owned by the company, four are already fully electric, and the last two will be updated to electric cars.
What about emission compensation?
However, I still have one personal wish: that someone would tell us how to solve the compensation of the remaining emissions sensibly and measurably. After that, the list of tasks to be done will shorten, and keeping the promises made will start to look even likely.
Erkki Oikarinen
Risk Management and Sustainability Manager
