The Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council was participating in the Finnish Environment Institute’s CANEMURE project, promoting actions to mitigate climate change. CANEMURE stands for “Towards Carbon Neutral Municipalities and Regions in Finland”. 22 organisations were participating in this six-year EU project: municipalities and municipal organisations, research institutions and companies.
The aim of the project was to promote smart and low-carbon transport, increase the production of distributed renewable energy and improve the energy efficiency of buildings. In addition, processes creating a sustainable urban structure and the conditions for low-carbon production and consumption were supported.
Apart from the Finnish Environment Institute, main project partners were Tampere University, Natural Resources Institute Finland and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. In total, the budget was 15.3 million euros. The EU Life programme stood for most of the funding; i.e. 9.1 million euros.
Roadmap for climate neutral Helsinki-Uusimaa with clear objectives
In this project, the role of the Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council was to promote regional cooperation and create a roadmap for a climate neutral Helsinki-Uusimaa, as to reach the national objectives for climate change. We influenced the decision-making in the region, and were also promoting climate awareness.
The road map meant flexible networking between the cities and municipalities in the region, also including companies and other actors. The successes of our co-development and pilot projects were put together into a flexibly updated roadmap to be used on a larger scale.
Municipalities have the key roles in pilot projects implementing for instance projects for climate smart building, solutions for two-way district heating and methods for public cleantech acquisitions. Participating projects came from Helsinki, Hyvinkää, Lohja and Porvoo .
The aim in Helsinki-Uusimaa was also to clarify the climate change policy of regional actors, and to find and select a common direction. In this project, as when establishing networks, our most important partners were the Helsinki-Uusimaa Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment ELY and the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY.
For more information, please contact:
Simo Haanpää
Adviser, Climate Change
simo.haanpaa@uudenmaanliitto.fi
Climate change adaptation, Regions4Climate Project
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