2023

Karhunen Antti; Laihanen Mika; Ranta Tapio

The aim of the paper is to introduce the possibilities that forest biomass has in variable energy sector. Past year especially natural gas and peat fuel has been topical in Finland. Imports of natural gas from Russia ended which put pressure on increasing the use domestic fuels such as biomass and peat in Finland. However, peat fuel production and consumption has been decreasing rapidly past years which makes it difficult revive again. Study evaluates the conditions and possibilities to replace peat and natural gas with domestic renewable forest biomass. The availability of forest biomass is sufficient to replace peat fuel in energy production but replacing natural gas completely novel solutions such as hydrogen, electrical boiler etc. are needed. Significant changes in operation environment of energy supply both internationally and nationally have speed up the transition towards carbon neutral energy production. Biomass fuels still have a key role in Finnish energy production, but new methods to produce energy without traditional combustion are on their way. These will take time and investments in energy sector are usually long-term.