The former Nokia campus is upgraded for the 2020s – district heat consumption will shrink by a third

Tenants’ interests first. That was the starting point when German asset manager Quadoro and their representative Bridge Properties set out to work with LeaseGreen to plan the energy renovation of Hermia 5, located in the Hermia Science Park. Known as a technology hub, the property is part of a real estate fund that supports sustainable development. It is located in Hervanta, Tampere.

The decision to start an energy renovation was influenced by a number of factors: rising energy prices, the green values of the German owner and the fact that the building services engineering of the 25-year-old property was coming to the end of its life cycle. The property and its technology needed to be brought into the 2020s in an orderly manner.

“We don’t want to take any risks about the deterioration of tenants’ conditions or the reliability of building services. Tenants’ interests always come first,” says Taru Kuusisto. She works as an asset manager at Bridge Properties, the company that manages the property.

In addition to traditional offices, the building has laboratory and testing facilities that are anechoic and vibration-free. For example, geothermal heating was excluded from the options at an early stage of the design because drilling energy wells would have caused vibrations and noise.

“It would not have been possible to secure the business of all tenants during the drilling. Therefore, we decided to look for other ways to reduce energy consumption.”

The energy renovation of a property on the campus, which Nokia built for itself, was ultimately designed to cause as little disruption as possible to the users and tenants of the property – and still minimise the building’s repair debt and energy consumption.

Energy recycling brings bigger savings

In practice, the building’s automation system will be replaced and heat exchangers and ventilation will be modernised. However, the most significant energy savings will come from changes to the cooling system: one of the old cooling machines will be replaced by a heat pump, which will provide heat in winter and cold in summer. The second chiller also produces cold by free cooling. The third change to the cooling system is a heat pump to recycle the condensation heat from the server cooling system directly into heating the building.

“In the hands of a skilled designer, heat pumps are quite an asset,” says Johannes Rimpiläinen of LeaseGreen. “They allow us to make use of waste energy. Energy recycling doesn’t work everywhere, but here it works perfectly. The building gets free energy and the reliability of the cooling system is further improved.”

Heat pumps cut 34% of a property’s district heating consumption. This means 630 MWh less energy consumption than before – and this is not only reflected in the carbon footprint, but also in euros, of course.

“Energy recycling is a smart way to save energy. It also brings stability to the cost structure of a building when inflation increases other maintenance costs,” says Kuusisto.

Hermia 5 was built in 1998 and has a rental area of around 13 000^m2. Hermia 5 and the adjacent Hermia 6 are part of the Quadoro Sustainable Real Estate Europe Private real estate fund, which invests in sustainable real estate in European cities.

Further information

Asset Manager Taru Kuusisto, Bridge Properties
+358 44 501 6698, taru.kuusisto@bridgeproperties.fi

Johannes Rimpiläinen, Account Director, LeaseGreen
+358 50 360 9833, johannes.rimpilainen@leasegreen.com