The Finnish Parliament has approved a government proposal to phase out coal-fired power generation as of 1 May 2029. Coal-fired power plants operated by the power utility Fortum (1 GW of coal-fired capacity) and others will have to cease operations by then and some of the related costs will be supported through a large-scale subsidy scheme (around €90m).
As of 2017, 14% of the Finnish power generation was still sourced from coal, most of which (66%) was imported from Russia. Finland would replace coal with nuclear (33% of the power mix in 2017), and two nuclear projects are being developed, with the first one, Olkiluoto-3 EPR, expected in May 2019. Nuclear could cover up to 60% of the power mix in 2025.
Finland's greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are on the rise and grew by 6% in 2017, partly because of an increase in coal consumption for power generation and heating. The country has already planned to unveil legislation for a carbon tax in 2018 and the government is pushing for a policy startup in 2019 so that gas power plants could compete more easily with coal-fired ones.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.