The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2021–2025
Fortum's FishHeart pumps fish over its dam with AI — D&AD 2025 White Pencil
A floating, AI-driven fishway lifts fish over Fortum's hydro dams — 12,500+ fish carried by 2022, D&AD 2025 Sustained Impact White Pencil.
Fortum
What it had to solve
Fortum's Leppikoski hydropower plant in Paltamo sits on the Oulujoki river system, where the threatened Oulujärvi lake trout must swim upstream to spawn. The dam blocks that migration, and the tightly built plant left no room for a conventional fishway.
How it works
Fortum's Leppikoski hydropower plant in Paltamo, Finland, sits on the Oulujoki river system where the threatened Oulujärvi lake trout needs to swim upstream to reach spawning grounds. The dam that generates renewable power also blocks that migration, and the tightly built plant left no room for a conventional fish ladder. In 2021 Fortum answered with Fishheart — a floating, mobile fishway installed in the plant's tailrace channel.
The system creates an attraction flow that guides fish into a tube, then uses artificial intelligence and biometric data collection to identify each specimen in real time. Migratory fish are propelled through an underwater tunnel safely over the dam; non-migratory fish are sent back. The device had previously been used at the Taivalkoski plant and in Sweden, and at Leppikoski it entered test use in August 2021.
Results came quickly: about 2,000 fish — lake trout, perch, lamprey, bream, vendace, whitefish and pike perch — crossed during the 2021 test period, and by mid-August 2022 more than 12,500 fish had passed, including endangered lake trout. Fortum combined the fishway with habitat restoration and fry stocking, and in May 2025 the work won the D&AD Sustained Impact White Pencil.
Why it lands
- It treats a fixed infrastructure problem as a data problem: AI and biometrics let one movable device sort, count and carry fish, so impact is measurable every season.
- It removes the binary choice between renewable energy and fish migration — a voluntary biodiversity measure that keeps the hydropower plant running.
- It scales by design: the floating unit can be repositioned where the fish actually are, making it a reusable product rather than a one-off civil works project.
- Published fish counts across years gave the D&AD jury evidence of sustained impact rather than a one-off gesture.
What it did
About 2,000 fish crossed in the 2021 test; more than 12,500 had passed by mid-August 2022, including endangered lake trout, alongside habitat restoration and fry stocking. In May 2025 the work won the D&AD Sustained Impact White Pencil for TBWA\Helsinki.
What you can take
When a site is too tight for permanent works, build a movable, intelligent device: it identifies every fish, relocates with the season, and turns biodiversity work into reusable infrastructure.
Since then
The Leppikoski results turned the plant into a reference site. Fortum kept expanding the river programme, announcing a bypass study for the Seitenoikea plant upstream in late 2022, while continuing habitat restoration and lake trout fry stocking on the Hyrynsalmi route. The fishway is marketed by Fishheart Ltd as a movable product, and Fortum positions it as a voluntary biodiversity measure that lets hydropower and fish migration coexist. After earlier Cannes Lions recognition, the work took the D&AD 2025 Sustained Impact White Pencil and remains Fortum's flagship fish-passage story.
Sources
- First trout have been transferred upstream over the Leppikoski hydropower plant in Finland – Leppikoski Fishheart inaugurated
- Fishheart fishway has carried more than 12,500 fish over Fortum's Leppikoski hydropower plant
- Fortum+FishHeart — D&AD Awards Archive
- D&AD 2025: Watch the 3 Black Pencils and 3 White Pencils Winners
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card