Planned P2X Solutions site in Finland, © P2X Solutions

For this Scandinavian country, the natural foundation for a hydrogen economy, compared to many others in Central Europe, is rather good. Finland has sufficient renewable energy resources, an enormous amount of water sources at its disposal and competitive electricity prices. Of the electricity generated from renewables in 2021, the highest share in Finland was nuclear at 35.6%, but hydro with 22.5% constituted nearly one quarter. Wind with 12.5% was the third most significant renewable electricity source. Biomass closely followed with 10.3%. All this accompanied by an intensely developed and reliable energy transmission network and the technological and digital expertise to make power generation in Finland extremely efficient and low cost.

The current requests to the national grid operator Fingrid for wind power grid connections amount to nearly 100 GW of additional power. Furthermore, publicly announced projects in various stages of planning so far total 21 GW of additional capacity. In 2020, Finland’s total electricity generation capacity, from all energy sources, lay around 16 GW. The growth in forecast is therefore promising, as are the major leaps in development of onshore wind and biomass.

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Especially great potential is to be offered by the expansion of offshore wind energy. This is currently not a major area in Finland, but the Finnish wind industry is talking of 31 new offshore farms that may appear along the country’s coast in the future. The first tenders for offshore wind energy, according to the Finnish government, will be possible in 2023 and 2024.

“In January 2021, the first approvals for offshore wind energy research in Finland’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) were issued. WPD Finland Oy was allowed the area west of Jakobstad. Shortly before, OX2 Finland Oy had received clearance to perform research in this area. In addition, the latter has been authorized to carry out research to the west of Hailuoto,” said the German economic development agency Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) in January 2022. WPD Finland is also extensively active in the area of onshore wind. The company is investing in wind power plants in the far north of Finland, among other things, and with the wind park Nuolivaara, Lapland, the first construction project beyond the Arctic Circle was realized.[…]

… Read this article to the end in the latest H2-International

Author: Aleksandra Fedorska