Finland's low-carbon energy transition based on forest biomass and nuclear power encompasses risks.

What is it about?

Finland has ambitious climate targets and intends to ban the use of coal and halve the oil use by 2030, mainly based on traditional forest biomass and nuclear power. These policy choices, however, encompass sizeable risks for a low-carbon energy transition. Here we investigate alternative pathways for disruptive risks from such policies based on massive introduction on variable renewable electricity (VRE) with intersectoral coupling through Power-to-X technologies (P2X), also considering future demand uncertainties. We analyzed several risk involving scenarios for years 2030 and 2050 using a national energy system model with 1-h resolution, which includes power, heat and fuel sectors. The results indicate that even in case of worst-case energy policy risks with nuclear and bioenergy, a feasible energy system solution can be found. Renewable energy resources were employed to their maximum potential levels with P2X flexibility options, especially Power-to-Heat. However, without energy efficiency measures, the present renewable energy resource base was not able to compensate for all primary energy fall-out, which would lead to higher system costs and CO2 emissions. This implies that in case of high dominance of a few energy sources, an alternative pathway may require strong energy efficiency measures and developing further the renewable energy resource base.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The climate sustainability of forest biomass is unclear. Nuclear power has both political and economic uncertainties. Finland's energy and climate strategy strongly leans on both of these, but don't address the risks associated. In this paper we sketch alternative strategies in case these risks would materialise. We show that wind could play a more important role, but will require sectoral coupling and increasing its resource based. Also, energy efficiency would deserve more attention in this context.

Perspectives