Hammarby Sjöstad 2.0

Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed urban development projects. An old port and industrial area have been replaced by a modern district with over 25,000 inhabitants. The City of Stockholm imposed strict environmental requirements regarding the design of the district at an early stage, with the aim of reducing the development’s total environmental impact by half compared with comparable areas. For Hammarby Sjöstad, a new cyclical model dubbed “the Hammarby model” was developed to find environmentally friendly solutions for energy, water and sewage as well as waste.

Since 2013, sustainability efforts have been continued through the citizens’ initiative ElectriCITY Innovation, in a collaboration between citizens, tenant-owner associations, companies and academia. The ambition is for Hammarby Sjöstad to be a leader in the climate transformation, with the goal to make the district climate-neutral by 2030. The project is called Hammarby Sjöstad 2.0 It functions as a demo site and test bed for innovations in the fields of energy, transport, circular economy and digital urban development. ElectriCITY helps housing associations to implement energy efficiency with savings of up to 20 percent of the energy cost and investments for renewable energy, such as solar cells, geothermal heat, heat pumps and more. Several housing associations have thus reduced their costs for purchasing energy by more than 50 percent.

An important part of ElectriCITY’s work involves ensuring that the innovations that are tested can be commercialised and also developed in an international market.

In the 20 years that have passed since the first residents moved to the district, about 130,000 people in delegations from around 100 countries have come to study the urban environment, how its energy, water and recycling systems have been designed, and how public transport accounts for 80 per cent of daily travel.