Why is new production of electricity needed in Finland?

Continual steady economic growth in Finland and an improvement in employment will create new consumption and demand for various commodities. The consumption of electricity has grown evenly over several years by an annual rate of more than 2%. The year 2005 was an exception, showing a fall in the annual consumption compared with 2004, principally because of the drawn-out industrial action in the forest industry, but since then consumption has returned to the earlier growth curve.

With the growth in the annual consumption of electrical energy, peak consumption also increases, and at the same time the production capacity during peak times in the year must be able to generate electricity. Peak consumption in Finland has climbed upwards by an average of some 300 MW per year.

In the future, electricity consumption is expected to even out, especially as energy efficiency is improving, but the growth will continue. Estimates say that the use of electricity will grow so that the annual need for capacity will go up by an average of more than 200 MW until 2015 and subsequently by about 100 MW. This increase and the loss of aging production capacity will have to be covered by constructing additional capacity and imports of electricity. However, Finland´s domestic capacity should be adequate even in situations where imports from neighbouring countries would not be possible, for example because of exceptional weather conditions.

Finland is committed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. In line with the EU´s burden sharing agreement, Finland must reduce greenhouse emissions to the 1990 level by 2008-2012. Achieving this aim will be an extremely demanding task, and it will mean that raising the production of electricity cannot increase carbon dioxide emissions. The alternatives are mainly renewable energy and nuclear power. Additional hydropower will be built on waterways already harnessed, but its amount will be minimal compared with the need.

The third unit at the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant, OL3, will, according to the present timetable, be ready in 2012. Its annual production capacity will be about 13 billion kWh, i.e. more or less equivalent to the amount of electricity imported annually at this moment. The predicted growth in overall consumption, however, will take up some of this increase, and further investment will be necessary for increasing the production of electricity.