Finland ramps up heat pump and other renewable technologies

Apr. 26, 2010 – Last week the Finnish government outlined a plan to meet its European Union obligations of raising the share of renewables to 38% of energy consumption by 2020. The government foresees providing support of around €327 million per year in 2020 to increase the use of renewables, including heat pumps.

The government's ministerial working group for climate and energy policy agreed on a package of measures to promote renewable energy. The agreement came one day ahead of government discussions on the construction of two more commercial nuclear reactors. The programme to promote the use of renewable sources of energy was part of the bargain agreed by government parties - a so-called “twig package”.

Nonetheless, "this addition of renewable energy is equivalent in scale to three big nuclear power plants," Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said. The aim of the measures is to increase energy production based on renewable forms of energy by a total of 38 TWh of final energy consumption by 2020. "In terms of scale, this is a massive solution," Vanhanen said after the ministerial working group reached an agreement on the proposal.

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Source: hydrocarbons21.com