Sustainability at Koas

KOAS is continuously improving the sustainability of student living

Housing is known to be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. However, we can all influence the climate and environmental impact of housing through our actions!

At Koas, environmental actions have already been taken for over 15 years by utilizing building technology and automation-related solutions. In our strategy, we also prioritise climate and environmental action. Climate change is being tackled for example by procuring electricity produced from renewable sources and decreasing our carbon footprint together with Koas tenants. We aim to become carbon neutral by 2030 and encourage everyone in the housing sector to take climate action as well.

We evaluate our carbon footprint at regular intervals and continuously develop our operations

Our strategy has sustainability at its core and that is why it can be seen in our four main goals:

Becoming carbon neutral by 2030
Advancing community spirit
Desirable apartments in good locations
Improving equity ratio

Read more about our actions towards sustainability in our annual report (in Finnish only).

We are taking action

We use renewable electricity

At Koas, all the essentials of housing and living are packaged into one rent, including electricity. Starting from the beginning of 2020, all electricity used by Koas tenants, office and in-house maintenance facilities is certified renewable electricity produced by hydropower.

We aim to become carbon neutral by 2030

By 2030 we aim not to produce any more emissions in our own actions than the atmosphere can absorb. In the future we want to make sure that all emissions by Koas drop to zero. Read more below!

We are committed to saving natural resources. We have been granted an EcoCompass Certificate.

www.ekokompassi.fi

EcoCompass is an environmental management system that helps systematically design environmental objectives and actions. It is based on international environmental standards such as EMAS and ISO14001.

... and many more environmental and climate action.

About the carbon footprint of student housing

Sustainability is also rooted in KOAS’s strategy that was renewed in 2019. We aim to become carbon neutral in terms of our own operations, procured electricity and heat by 2030.

Basically we want to minimize our emissions so that we are not producing more emissions than can be absorbed by the atmosphere. At KOAS we want to make sure that in the future the emissions from our operations are brought down to zero.

To truly reach this ambitious and sustainable goal we have started systematically calculating and evaluating our carbon footprint. These calculations will continue in the coming years and we will strive to reduce our carbon footprint each year.

In 2020 our estimated carbon footprint was approximately 2406 t CO2e. In 2019 this figure was about 3493 t CO2e. Looking at these numbers a decrease in the emissions can already be seen. Thanks to all our amazing tenants and staff!

Many different factors affect the calculation of a carbon footprint. What we have taken into account in these figures are the following five elements: electricity consumption, heating, transportation, waste and business travel. As it can be seen below there has been a significant reduction in the emissions produced by electricity. This change is due to a switch to renewable hydropower in 2020. Currently the largest source of emissions is from the heating and this is something we are planning on tackling in our operations in the near future.