From waste heat to energy savings

“Here at Orion, we keep a close eye on our energy consumption. We welcome any new technologies that enable us to reduce our emissions more effectively than before.”

– Heikki Lempinen, Facility Manager, Orion

Our research centre in Turku was renovated in 2017. In connection with the renovation, we also wanted to find ways to actively support emissions reduction targets here at Orion. Because the cooling machine at the research centre needed to be replaced, we decided to favour new technology: the cooling machine was replaced with a heat pump.

The heat pump generates both cooling and heat, and it also enables us to reduce our use of district heating. In other words, the waste heat from cooling generation can be used for heating. This results in considerable total energy savings.

Why raise the bar?

Orion is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing the use of district heating is one way to decrease our environmental burden. In Turku, the old technology was no longer sufficient to achieve the company’s ambitious emissions reduction targets, so the investment in new technology was an important climate measure.

How are we raising the bar?

We replaced our cooling machine with a heat pump. The replacement has markedly reduced our carbon dioxide emissions from heating.