The Finnish parliament approved a government proposal to ban the use of coal to produce energy from May 1, 2029. Any coal plants owned by Fortum and other energy firms will have to halt operations by this date. However, the government official who made this announcement did state that there would be a program implemented to compensate for some of the costs.
However, Greenpeace Nordic’s Kaisa Kosonen explained that “this law does not provide compensation for utilities with coal plants. The parliament’s constitutional committee did not see grounds for it, and instead saw that the measures taken are in right proportion and that the transition period in itself is sufficient for rearranging one’s business.”
According to Statistics Finland data, in the first nine months of 2018, coal represented eight percent of Finland’s total energy consumption. So overall, this ban shouldn’t be very difficult to execute and in reality, it won’t have much of a dramatic impact.
Additionally, this news of the coal ban is nothing new. These power plants have known it would happen one day. It just didn’t have a date set until very recently. Nevertheless, it’s a significant step as it highlights the growing consensus around coal’s usefulness moving forward.
Lauri Tenhunen, a senior adviser to the Finnish Parliament’s commerce committee which prepared the legislation told Reuters:
“It has been planned for quite some time. Yesterday it was approved. The effective date is May 1, 2029. It is a legislation to ban the energy use of coal. After that date, coal can only be used in an emergency.”
Finland was among the co-founders of the Powering Past Coal alliance. Back in 2017 the country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment said it aimed to phase out coal from energy production by 2030. The country has succeeded in bringing forward its coal phase-out deadline by a whole year earlier than they thought possible. It is very exciting.
Banning coal power plants has been happening all across Europe. Most EU member states have already done it. Finland has joined only 10 other EU countries planning to eliminate existing coal power plants. France and Sweden lead coal phaseout plans in 2022, followed by Austria, Ireland, Italy, and Britain in 2025, and then Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Portugal.
Plus, government-led coal phaseout plans aren’t the only headwinds these coal utilities face. Other such oppositions include the falling cost of renewables and rising carbon prices, as well as pressure from investors, creditors and insurers. These sort of pressures could see coal come off the grid much sooner than expected in some countries whose deadlines are set for much later on in the future. For example, Germany, which recently agreed to a phaseout by 2038 at the latest.
Olli Tiainen, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Nordic, told Cleantechnica via email:
“We are happy that the coal ban is finally true. 2029 is however not fast enough but it is definitely the right direction. This opens up the possibility to ban other fossil fuels as well and the next step is to ensure that this will happen. At the same time, we want to make sure that coal is not replaced only with biomass as it is not climate-neutral and poses a threat to Finnish biodiversity. When we do that, phase out coal without replacing it with biomass, we truly can show the rest of the world how to decarbonize the heating sector since the main product of all the coal plants we have left in Finland are mainly producing district heat.”
