Finland has long been known as the land of a thousand lakes. But now the Finns can also call themselves the land of a thousand windmills. In 2022, Finland set up 437 new windmills, so that there are now a total of 1,339 windmills spinning over the Finnish spruce forests. It has increased the capacity to produce wind power by almost 75 percent in just one year. The figures come from the industry organization Finnish Wind Power Association. They expect that the development of wind power will continue in Finland in the coming years, so that wind power will cover 28 percent of Finland’s total electricity consumption as early as 2025. – Right now, no other energy source can be developed so quickly and cost-effectively in Finland, says Anni Mikkonen, who is director of the Finnish trade association for wind power, FWPA. Giant wind turbines can harvest the forest’s wind Finland is far from the only European country currently investing in renewable energy. Only a couple of years ago, investments in green energy were relatively low in Europe. The annual additions were below 20 GW annually. But since 2018, green energy has exploded and investments have risen year on year. In 2022, renewable energy with a total capacity of 60 GW was set up for the first time, according to figures from the analysis company BloombergNEF. In both the EU and in Finland, not only have more wind turbines been built, but each wind turbine has also gotten bigger and bigger. Twenty years ago, an average Finnish windmill was less than 60 meters high, not counting the blades. Today, the windmills are more than twice as tall. This means both that the wind turbines produce far more energy than before, but also that they can now be placed in places where it did not make sense before. The giant windmills are more efficient in areas where there is less wind, so they do not need to be placed in open landscapes. Instead, they can be placed, for example, in the large Finnish forests. This is shown by figures from the Finnish technical research center VTT. Choosing both wind and nuclear power In many countries, there have been major debates about whether it is solar cells or wind turbines that lead to a climate-neutral future, or whether it is nuclear power. But in Finland they build both. A new Finnish nuclear power plant – Olkiluoto 3 – is on track to produce its first electricity, and Finland has spent 40 years building a giant underground storage facility for its spent nuclear fuel. The first preliminary studies began in 1983 and the repository is expected to open in 2023. – There is a big debate in Finland regarding nuclear power, but the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant is the only project under construction. It should have started producing electricity already in 2009, but the latest calculation is that it will only start at the beginning of March this year, says Anni Mikkonen. The increase in the number of wind turbines being built is due to the fact that nuclear power has become a very expensive way of producing electricity and that wind and solar have become far cheaper in the last 20 years. Therefore, investors have lost their taste for plutonium and uranium. – In Finland, most energy investments take place without state support. This means that it is up to private businesses themselves to choose what they want to invest in. And right now they are choosing to invest in wind turbines, answers Anni Mikkonen. However, this does not mean that the Finns have chosen to completely abandon nuclear power. In 2022, nuclear power accounted for 30 percent of Finnish electricity consumption, and wind power supplied 14 percent. At the same time, the Finns had to import 15 percent of their electricity from other countries, because the country did not produce enough electricity for its own consumption. But the expectation is that new nuclear power plants together with the many new wind turbines will make Finland self-sufficient in energy from 2026. On the other hand, electricity consumption will continue to rise as larger parts of society convert to run on electricity. Finland has an ambitious goal of being climate neutral from 2035. This means an enormous electrification of transport, heat supply and industry, and also Power-to-X solutions (where electricity is used to produce different forms of fuel such as hydrogen) . This means greater electricity consumption and therefore also the need for significant investments in electricity production in Finland, also after 2026.
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Despite investing in nuclear power: Finland is now investing heavily in wind power
