A small country on the edge of Europe, with fewer people than London, thousands of lakes, 22 billion trees, a shiny new nuclear power station, and an ambition to reach Net Zero by 2035.
There’s often an argument of why the small countries should bother when they are dwarfed by China and the US, but understanding Finland as a pathfinder to a greener future is worthwhile.
Finland has the highest per capita consumption of energy in Europe, it’s cold in the winter and there is a lot of industry like machinery and ship production.
Although it is Europe’s smallest consumer of fossil fuels by percentage, Finland is 100% reliant on imports of oil which fuel its cars and industries. Just under 50% of new car sales were EVs last year, so this leaves decarbonisation of industry as a key objective.
About half of homes are connected to district heating schemes, with innovative use of waste heat from a data centre as a good example of whole system efficiency.
The Olkiluoto nuclear power plant is now online and is creating greater energy sovereignty for Finland which has been disconnected from Russian electricity supplies since the start of the war in Ukraine.
But there is evidence that the forests are being over farmed and logging means that rather than absorbing carbon Finland’s forests are now net producers.
What can we learn from Finland?
A whole system approach is needed. Actively designing how energy will flow through a country from source to use is critical. Pushing technologies is also critical, and Finland can show the world how to lead on heat pumps (if they work here they will work everywhere) and their record on district heating is impressive.
We can also learn that nuclear power is slow in development, ‘the supply chain isn’t used to the demanding standards of nuclear’, but it is worth it in both decarbonisation and sovereignty terms.
Public support as ever is the critical ingredient to any energy policy and the Finnish people are in general supportive of both renewables and nuclear.
