Public Acceptance of Arctic District Heating System in Finland

Abstract

In Finland, district heating system provides many advantages for peoples' everyday life. However, public acceptance is one of the major challenges to introduce renewable based district heating system in Finnish Arctic areas. This paper examines public acceptance in terms of public's opinion, awareness, knowledge about renewable based district heating system by designing a multiple-choice questionnaire with four groups of questions: background information, community perspective, social perspective, and individual perspective. Study indicates that more than 60% of total respondents were willing to invest extra cost to obtain renewable based district heating services; 50% of them would prefer tax support. The answers showed that the long-term economic feasibility of using renewable based in home was not obvious to 31.05% of the total respondents. Half of the study respondents believe that energy poverty is in higher level in rural areas, but sustainable heating technologies could be more economic than traditional heat sources. Findings of this paper have important policy implications related to public acceptance of Arctic district heating system in Finland.