Lahti’s city hall switched to environmentally friendly and renewable wind power

04 January 2010

Lahti made an important symbolic gesture by switching its soon 100 year old town hall to renewable wind power. The city hall, designed by architect Eliel Saarinen, is one of Lahti’s most treasured buildings. Wind power for the city hall is supplied by the city's own energy company Lahti Energia

Mayor Jyrki Myllyvirta values highly the central government's participation in the city’s environmental campaign.

- Lahti has an ambitious goal to be a model city of sustainable development. It is good that the town hall and its people set a good example.

The father of the idea, the city's development director, José Valanta sees the introduction of wind power as a part of a broader concept.

- The goal of the Green City concept is to raise the city of Lahti to the level of a real environmental city. To reach that goal we are ready for concrete measures. The introduction of new technological solutions is one of them.

In June 2009 Lahti made a strong commitment in its strategy to profile itself as a leading environmental city. The strategy focuses on strong environmental know-how, urban development of the whole city based on the principles of sustainable development and the already strong status as a centre for environmental business in Finland.

A significant step towards the realization of these objectives is initiated by Lahti Energia´s power plant investment, which cuts carbon dioxide emissions throughout the whole city. Lahti Energia will also significantly increase wind power capacity in the next few years. The company's CEO Janne Savelainen notes that this is a strategic choice for his company.

- We want to be actively involved in the making Lahti the model city for sustainable development.
Investing in wind power and in an entirely new type of power plant that uses waste as fuel for energy production, reduces substantially the use of coal in Lahti. 

Links:
Strategy 2025 for the city of Lahti
Environment Cluster in Lahti region

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