Microsoft and the City of Espoo announce a strategic collaboration to accelerate sustainability, citizen services and innovation

Microsoft and Espoo, the second largest city in Finland, have signed a letter of intent to establish a long-term strategic collaboration that will support the city's digital transformation and foster innovation and growth in the region. The collaboration aims to reinforce Espoo’s and Microsoft’s efforts towards reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals and it covers the five themes, that coincide with  Espoo’s strategy:

• carbon-neutral Espoo 2030,
• internationally attractive entrepreneurship and innovation capital,
• leading city of learning and education,
• future work-life skills,
• data-driven and impactful Espoo.

By leveraging Microsoft's cloud, data, and AI technologies, as well as its expertise and ecosystem, the city aims to achieve its vision of being a responsible and human-centric pioneer of sustainable development. Espoo and Microsoft will also explore opportunities to collaborate with other public and private sector organizations, such as universities, research institutes, and startups, to create a vibrant innovation hub in Espoo and the Helsinki metropolitan area.

Collaboration is to span over five years. One of the concrete elements is Microsoft's decision to invest in a new sustainable datacenter region in Finland and locating one of the sites in Espoo. The datacenter will provide fast and reliable cloud services to Finnish customers and partners, as well as enable the development of new digital solutions and services for various industries and sectors.

The datacenter will also use innovative heat recovery technology on the largest scale in the world. The excess heat generated by the servers will be transferred to the district heating network of Fortum, a leading clean-energy company. This will reduce the carbon footprint of Espoo, its neighboring communities, and their citizens by 400 000 tons of CO2 per year and provide enough heat for up to 250 000 district heat users in the area.  This is an essential part of the Carbon Neutral Espoo 2030 roadmap.

The heat recovery technology is part of Microsoft's commitment to achieve carbon negativity by 2030 and remove its historical carbon emissions by 2050. It is also aligned with Espoo's ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030 and to promote circular economy and resource efficiency in the city. Additionally, the building project of the datacenters provide employment estimated thousands of person-years during the next 7-10 years and it offers plenty of opportunities for local companies to become suppliers to the project. It is expected to have major positive impact on the local economy

"The City of Espoo is constantly looking for new ways to improve the well-being and happiness of our citizens and to make our operations more efficient and sustainable. We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft, a world leader in cloud, data, and AI, to accelerate our digital transformation and innovation. This collaboration will enable us to learn from the best, leverage cutting-edge technologies, and co-create solutions that will benefit not only Espoo, but also the whole of Finland and the world", says Jukka Mäkelä, Mayor of Espoo.

"We are delighted to partner with the City of Espoo, a frontrunner in digitalization and innovation in Finland and globally. Together, we will co-create solutions that will empower the city and its people to achieve more, while advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This alliance is a great example of how Microsoft is committed to supporting the digital transformation of the public sector and fostering local innovation ecosystems in Finland and beyond", says Mervi Airaksinen, Managing Director, Microsoft Finland.

Jukka Mäkelä, Mayor of Espoo, tel. +358 46 8773953

Microsoft Oy
Pekka Isosomppi, Communications Lead
tel. +358 40 5162399, pekka.isosomppi@microsoft.com