Analysis of the Finnish Energy System

Energy in Finland describes energy and electricity production, consumption and import in Finland. Finland lacks domestic sources of fossil energy and must import substantial amounts of petroleum, natural gas, and other energy resources, including uranium for nuclear power. Energy consumption in Finland per capita is the highest in European Union. Reasons for this include industries with high energy consumption (half of energy is consumed by industry), high standards of living, cold climate (25% of consumption is used in heating) and long distances (16% of consumption is used in transport).

Overview of Energy in Finland

Rise of energy consumption stopped in 21st century, mainly due to changes of industry. There is now less heavy industry and the energy efficiency has improved. New energy consuming business is the data centers of international enterprises. Among all industries, the

heaviest users are paper and pulp industry, metal industry, oil refining and chemical industry. Energy consumption for heating has increased, when population and average size of homes has grown. Transport uses 30% of all energy, but 40% of the energy produced with oil. Consumption per kilometer has decreased, but amount of kilometers has grown. In 2014, the energy products import was worth 10 billion euros. During first half of 2015 the most important sources were wood (26% of total consumption), oil (23%), nuclear (18%), coal (9%), gas (7%), hydro-power (5%) and peat (5%). Wind power covered one per cent of consumption, other sources in total four per cent. About one quarter of energy production in Finland comes from burning wood. There are no forests grown for fuel. Instead, most firewood is byproduct of other uses of wood. The black liquor (byproduct of pulp production) and peel and branches (byproduct of sawmill industry) are used by the forest industry itself in creating its own energy by wood burning. Finland does not have any of its own petroleum resources, so it relies 100% on petroleum imports. Finland's nuclear power program has four nuclear reactors in two power plants. The first of these came into operation in 1977. In 2000–2014 the four units have produced annually 21.4–22.7 TWh electricity, which has been 27–35% of energy production and 24–28 % of energy consumption in Finland. They are among the world's most efficient, with average capacity factors of 94% in the 1990s. Finland's nuclear power program has four nuclear reactors in two power plants. The first of these came into operation in 1977. Coal is imported from Russia and Poland. Finland was 100% dependent on a single supplier in gas, namely Russia, and there is no gas storage capacity. However, in Finland, gas is essentially never used in direct heating of homes, which are heated by direct electric heating, oil or district heating. 75% of gas is

used for production of electricity or combined heat and power and in industry, with domestic use being rare. In total, 93% of the gas is sold to large installations directly rather than by retail. Peat and hard coal are the most harmful energy sources for global warming in Finland. Peat was the most popular energy source in Finland for new energy investments 2005–2015. According to IEA country report the Finnish subsidies for peat undermine the goal to reduce CO2 emissions and counteracts other environmental policies. The share of renewable energy in per cent in Finland was 28% in 2012 and 25% in 2000. The share of renewable energy 5 years averages 2006–2010 was 24.7 % and 10 years average 2001–2010 was 26.0 %. The EU set target for Finland (38%) by 2020 was reached in 2014, and in 2015 39.3 % of consumed energy was renewable.

Policy:

Finland’s economy is highly industrialized. With its energy-intensive industries and its cold climate, Finland’s energy consumption per capita is the highest in the IEA. Modeling of Finland Energy 2050 for RE is mostly based down reducing the costs due to import of fossil fuels and also having a lower release of CO2. Finland is highly dependent on imported fossil fuels, and energy policy is at the heart of the government’s concerns. The government’s energy strategy aims to strengthen Finland’s energy security, to move progressively towards a de-carbonized industry, and to deepen its integration in the wider European market. Finland is the most forested country in Europe; biomass will thus play a central role in meeting the target. Finland is one of few IEA countries with plans to expand its nuclear capacity, and the Parliament has approved the construction of two more nuclear power plants. High share of solar PV can be another source of RE in the future energy outlook of Finland but some strategies should be taken into

consideration due to long, cold and dark Finnish winter in order to increase the capacities of solar PV.

Recently, the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy stated that rapidly developing technologies such as solar power may create opportunities and offer the possibility of a 100% renewable energy system for Finland. Investment subsidies for renewable energy are mainly targeted towards commercializing new technology and the effort sharing sector, especially towards institutions producing advanced transport bio fuels. In addition, the use of agricultural, societal and industrial waste and side streams in the production of heat and electricity and as transport fuel is promoted. Long-term competitiveness of national economy and the prerequisites of financial growth will be ensured with cost-effective measures to reduce emissions.

Procedure:

The main study for this project is to find the correct, accurate and up to date information and data for Finland energy demand, supply and consumption. As the EnegyPLAN demands input data for demand, supply, balance and storage, I tried to find the data required.

The data I extracted for this project are mainly obtained from the following sources:

IEA (International Energy Agency)

IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency)

EnergyPLAN has some sorts of distribution which can be used during the modeling. The distribution represents the percentage of the production/demand at every time step. The distribution must include 8784 data points, one for each hour of the simulation period

As a reference model I chose 2014 Finnish Energy System. The model can be considered for two primary sections: Technical and Economic

data. Here the reference model does not require economic inputs as only the technical performance is compared.

Input Data

EnergyPLAN model requires two of the following technical parameters:

1. The total annual production/demand (i.e. TWh/year).

2. The capacity of the unit installed (i.e. MW).

3. The hourly distribution of the total annual production/demand, which have the following criteria:

As I mentioned before, there are 8784 data points which represents the distribution. The data points are usually between 0 and 1, representing 0-100% of production/demand. However, if a distribution is entered with values greater than 1, EnergyPLAN will automatically index the distribution: This is done by dividing each entry in the distribution by the maximum value in the distribution. This means that historical hourly data can be directly used in EnergyPLAN for a distribution. The distribution is inputted as a text file and stored in the “Distributions” folder.

EnergyPLAN requires inputs of demand, supply, balancing and storage and cost.

In demand section, there are some subdivision.

Electricity

In this section the values for Electricity Demand was put in Twh/year unit.

Heating

This section divides to two subsections which are Individual Heating, District Heating and Heat Demand per Building. In the individual heating, specific data of each section was entered.

Cooling

Industry and Fuel In this part considered coal, oil, natural gas and biomass; values for the industry use were put but no data was found for non-energy use and losses.

Transport

Transport sector requisites were for jet fuel, diesel, petrol, natural gas and LPG, biofuels were also considered in case there were data available of its use. In 2050 simulation only bio-fuels are considered and the other fuels consumption is zero. Also H2 is predicted to be used in 2050.

Water

In Supply section, the subdivision of the section is:

Heat and Electricity

Electric capacity for Combined Heat and power (CHP) and production of electricity and heat for Industrial CHP were the inputs necessaries to evaluate the heat and electricity supply. In the simulation is predicted that electricity capacity is increasing by 2050.

Electricity only

In electricity only, the installed capacity of central power plants such as, thermo-electric, nuclear, geothermal and dammed hydro power, together with their efficiencies were required. Only data concerning Nuclear capacity was found. PP1 (CHP3 Condensing Mode) in 2050 is having much more capacity than 2014.

Heat only

Solar thermal production and the storage were the inputs provided for heat only.

Fuel Distribution

The fuel distribution was given according to the kind of fuel (coal, oil, natural gas or biomass).

Waste (not included in the project)

Balancing and storage contains:

Electricity

Contains three boxes of Electric Grid Stabilization Requirements, Critical Excess Electricity Production, and Electricity Storage.

Thermal

Thermal storage in form of Solar Thermal Storage is considered in the “Heat Only” section.

Liquid and gas fuel

Data related to Gas and Oil storage were inserted.

Results:

The results of the technical simulation show that even in the scenario without the Clean Energy Plan, an important increase in the share of renewable energies is expected. By 2050, electricity demand is increased from 82.49 to 89.65 TWh/year.

Reference Model 2014:

In the reference model we can see that most of the Electricity in 2014 is produced by fossil fuels based power plants and Renewable Energy Sources stand in the second place.

Projected Model 2050:

In the Projected Model we can see that most of the electricity generated is by Renewable Energy Sources.

By increasing the use of Renewable Energy Systems instead of fossil fuel power plants, the amount of CO2 emission decreases broadly, as we can see in the projected model CO2 emission is 0.23 (Mt) that is not ever recognizable on the figure.

EnergyPLAN includes a tool to visualize graphically electricity demand and production, following the given distributions the software shows the values on yearly, monthly, weekly and daily basis as is shown in the figures below. We can observe comparing figures the increased participation of renewable and its intermittent behavior in the electricity production.