Lapua is a typical Finnish city outside the metropolitan area and the rest five largest cities in Finland. Lapua is located in West-Finland, South Ostrobothnia region. Population is approximately 14.500 inhabitants.
A trend in communal policy in Finland has been that smaller rural municipalities surrounding rural cities have been joined together forming an economically sustainable community, and thus consisting of city centre and provinces. This kind of arrangements enables also creating of energy self-sufficient community operating by energy sources from own area. This development can be seen also in energy policy of Lapua city.
Actions in
Lapua aim at integrating renewable energy solutions in the energy supply side and energy efficiency and energy saving solutions in community buildings and facilities. The core centre of the city is already provided by a district heating system and bio-CHP-production taken into use in 2008. This experience will be shared with the partners’ communities. Energy saving actions, (including optimisation of the behaviour) in the buildings and new local district heating supplied by biogas polygeneration, bio-boilers, heat pumps, wind power, and effective energy management and remote control system are planned to fulfil the energy figure in order to reach share of 75 % for self-sufficiency until 2015. The Lapua city contains a wide countryside providing field and forest biomass for the whole city, and in addition to this, all bio-waste flows will be utilized as energy source. This will contribute to a significant decrease of the CO2 emissions. The wind farm close to the city will be based on the demonstration wind mill in SOLUTION project. The integration of the supply and demand side through the supply and demand management research will allow optimisation of the energy production and avoid waste.
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