Finland adopts energy strategy to 2030, bans coal-fired power by 2030

The government of Finland has approved its national energy and climate strategy to 2030, which will be submitted to the Parliament for final approval.



The strategy aims to raise the share of renewable energies in final energy consumption to over 50% in the 2020s, in order to reach carbon neutrality in the long term. The domestic use of imported oil will be halved during the 2020s (mainly in the transport sector, but also in building heating and machinery). Finland aims to have a minimum of 250,000 electric vehicles and a minimum of 50,000 gas-fuelled vehicles in 2030, while biofuels should cover 30% of all fuels sold to road transport by 2030. Finland will change its tax system to ensure that peat will not be more competitive than forest chips or forest-industry by-products, while being more competitive than coal and other imported fossil fuels. New investments will be made to significantly increase the use of wood-energy in the near future.



Coal-fired power generation will be phased out during the 2020s, to stop coal-fired generation by 2030; the government will work on a legal framework on discontinuing the use of coal by 2030.



Where renewable support is concerned, the current feed-in tariff system for wind power will be discontinued. An open tendering process will be implemented (total of 2 TWh in 2018-2020) as a transition to a market-base system in the future. Finland plans to implement technology-neutral competitive tendering, which means that the electricity production subsidy will only be paid for the most cost-effective and competitive production investments of renewable electricity. Finland will encourage CHP from forest chips and forest industry by-products. The existing support scheme will expire soon and a new scheme will be evaluated in 2018.