Sustainable living and sharing economy in student housing

Shared-use cars and bicycles available for tenants.

Lappeenranta Student Housing Foundation (LOAS) builds and maintains Finland’s greenest student housing community. LOAS has been actively experimenting with various solutions to improve energy efficiency. Different buildings use, among other things, geothermal heat, air-water heat pumps, solar power and heat recovery ventilating. Consumption-based billing, which involves tenants paying for electricity and water according to their own consumption, is also used to strive for reduced energy consumption.

LOAS also promotes the sharing economy by providing shared-use cars for its tenants. At the moment, cars are available in five different locations. In addition, LOAS was involved in acquiring shared-use bicycles for Lappeenranta, and there are shared-use bicycle stations in the yard of almost every LOAS location.

With its example, LOAS is instilling sustainable thinking to its young tenants. Energy consumption optimised to the best level possible can be maintained through monitoring and maintenance. The energy efficiency of buildings plays a major role in the planning of renovations and major improvements. Everything that can be is recycled, collection points for plastic, etc. have been added to all locations – and even partners are expected to employ energy-efficient solutions.

Future plans include increasing the amount of geothermal heat and solar power, as well as heat recovery from the property’s wastewater. Consumption monitoring will also be improved, with other solutions tried while keeping an open mind. All the electricity and district heating LOAS purchases are carbon neutral produced.