MuniFin / From pilot to practice – Sivakka takes an ambitious approach to sustainability in Oulu

Sivakka, the municipal housing company of the City of Oulu in northern Finland, has been pursuing an ambitious programme of climate and environmental action for over two decades. Energy efficiency has long been business as usual for the company – and its attention is now turning ever more firmly to carbon footprint and indirect emissions. As part of its 10-year anniversary of green bonds, MuniFin is raising organisations like Sivakka and their successes in sustainable construction to the forefront.

Sivakka has been successful in eliminating virtually all direct and indirect emissions from energy use within the company’s operations. One of the most concrete examples of this is the apartment building on Hiirihaukantie in the city’s Kaukovainio district. Completed in 2021 as part of the wider development of the area, the building served as a pilot site for the MAKING-CITY project by the European Union.

The building’s key innovation is its hybrid heating solution. It combines heat pump technology, district heating return flow, and various forms of waste heat. Thanks to this approach, Sivakka has managed to reduce the amount of primary energy drawn from outside the site to near zero.

The site has also made extensive investments in its building technology. Wastewater heat recovery, precise room-level sensors, demand-controlled ventilation, and ground-loop pre-heating and pre-cooling all work together to optimise both energy consumption and living conditions.

Living up to the energetic expectations

Sivakka set targets for the Hiirihaukantie apartment building – and they have been successfully met.

“Energy consumption has been exceptionally low in this building; in terms of energy efficiency, it has been a record-setter”, says Raimo Hätälä, CEO of Oulun Sivakka.

For the residents, the hybrid system manifests mostly as a consistently comfortable indoor temperature and good indoor air quality throughout the year.

“In everyday life, people don’t really think about how heat and cooling are produced for their apartment building, so the responses tend to be fairly neutral. But typically those residents that live in buildings with cooling, on average they report feeling more satisfied”, Hätälä notes.

Hiirihaukantie was not just an isolated experiment. There have since been several comparable hybrid heating solutions built in Oulu. Sivakka currently has a renovation project underway for a 250-apartment unit in the city’s Puolivälinkangas district.

“This renovation is actually considerably larger in scale than what the construction of Hiirihaukantie was. Here buildings that are decades old will gain cooling, and we will be able to manage indoor temperatures significantly better”, Hätälä explains.

A shift in focus: from energy to carbon footprint

At Sivakka, sustainability is viewed more broadly than as a mere climate or environmental issue. For the company, it also means making long-term, purposeful use of its building stock. The roots of this mentality trace back to the 1990s, when Sivakka began managing construction process in-house and long-term serviceability became a central criterion in the design process.

Energy savings were initially a question viewed through a cost-cutting lens, but down the line the perspective shifted to include responsibility considerations. Sivakka reports on its operations voluntarily in accordance with the VSME standard.

Now that emissions from energy use are close to zero, the company’s focus has shifted to carbon footprint management and so-called Scope 3 emissions. The latter arise from things such as maintenance operations and property management. The aim going forward is to reduce new construction and increase renovation of existing stock.

The company is currently working on a low-carbon roadmap that will define long-term targets for the carbon footprint of both new construction and renovation projects.

“Currently we are not aware of any technologies that could lower construction emissions all the way to zero. We are aiming for a controlled reduction in our carbon footprint. We will also continue to reduce energy use; that remains environmentally important.”

Sivakka has already begun carbon footprint accounting by mapping the footprint of projects started in 2025.

“Right now, we are below the current limits, but the requirements will tighten again in 2029 already. Getting below these new limits will require work in areas such as material choices.”

The company has been testing among other things low-carbon concrete, though its properties do not yet match those of conventional concrete. For instance, the curing time of low-carbon concrete is longer than that of ordinary concrete. Hätälä nonetheless takes an optimistic view of the future.

“I am confident that the concrete industry will find ways to produce lower-carbon concrete. Concrete has unrivalled properties in construction.”

Sivakka’s work has been exemplary when viewed through the lens of MuniFin’s green financing criteria.

“Green finance has inspired us to expand and sustain our efforts to promote sustainable construction. It has also helped us bring visibility to the work that we are doing”, Hätälä praises.