Use of public premises

This project focuses on the greenhouse gases caused by public premises. Altogether 32 pilot premises have been chosen from the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Kerava and Kirkkonummi municipality. These pilot premises include for example day care centres, schools, swimming halls, community centres, health centres, offices and a technical depot. The aim of this project is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from these pilot premises 10% from 2009 to 2011.

For each pilot premise, at least one so called eco-supporter is trained. Eco-supporters motivate and guide their workmates to make climate friendly choices in their work. This means reducing energy consumption in the building, to reduce waste, to use public transport instead of a car and to reduce copying paper consumption. Eco-supporters and real estate managers are encouraged to co-operate.

In this project a user-friendly web tool, the Climate Calculator, has been taken into use. The Climate Calculator is a web application designed to help offices and other premises to measure greenhouse gas emissions caused by the use of the premises, and find ways of reducing them. The calculator helps eco-supporters to evaluate emissions annually from heat and electricity consumption, travelling, transportation, paper consumption and waste caused by the pilot premise. The data needed can be easily found in the city´s accounting figures and invoices. The calculator can be very useful in designing concrete measures for reducing emissions and costs.