A comparative assessment of the bioenergy and renewable energy situation in the Nordic countries, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, was conducted in this study. What factors have contributed to the current high use of renewable energy and especially bioenergy in the Nordic countries? What are the sources of renewable energy and where renewable energy is being used? The development of renewable energy use is described by time series and compared to the overall development of the EU. All of the Nordic countries have high renewable energy consumption and have already met the target for gross final energy consumption according to the Europe 2020 strategy while the EU is behind the 20% target. In total, 53.1 Mtoe renewable energy was used in the Nordic countries in 2018, which was 51% of the final energy consumption, 103.3 Mtoe. Bioenergy accounts for approximately half of renewable energy, 25.8 Mtoe, and is anticipated to develop further. Especially in Norway and Sweden the share of renewable energy was high (73% and 55%) compared to Finland and Denmark (41% and 36%). Norway is famous for hydropower (81% share of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in 2018) and Denmark for wind power production (20%), while Finland utilizes a lot of biomass for co-generation and heating (79%), followed by Denmark (64%) and Sweden (55%) in 2018. At EU level, bioenergy plays even a higher role than in Nordic countries in renewable energy production (56%) in 2017 and is anticipated to continue to grow in all end-use sectors such as heating and cooling, electricity generation and transport, in the 2020s.
In Finland it is estimated that forest biomass will be the main source of bioenergy when meeting the national target: 38% renewable from total energy consumption by 2020. This target must become concrete for regional and local level participators of a forest industry and actions should take place in large combined heat and power generation (CHP) plants, district heating plants and independent heating systems. In energy production replacing fossil fuels with renewa-ble energy is reasonable in many cases. However, there are usually doubts about the availability and security of supply of forest biomass. The aim of this study is to introduce a systematical method for analyzing the availability and demand of forest biomass in regional and local level. This study introduces an objective method for analyzing local possibilities on where and how much the use of forest biomass could be increased. By replacing use of fossil fuels with renewable and domestic energy sources carbon dioxide (CO<i>2</i>) emissions and dependency on imported fossil fuels can be reduced. Utilization of biomass creates also local employment on energy sector
The largest share of renewable energy in Finland comes from bioenergy. In 2019, bioenergy accounted for 82% (416 PJ, 116 TWh) of renewable energy in Finland. This study assesses the potential for increasing bioenergy in energy production by 2035 and what role it will play in achieving the carbon neutrality target in Finland. The role of different energy sources in the energy system was examined using existing scenarios developed for The National Long-Term Strategy. Two alternative low-emission scenarios have been developed to last until 2050 to meet the 2035 carbon neutrality target. In 2035, the amount of bioenergy has risen to 520 -550 PJ (144 -153 TWh), which is about 70% of renewable energy consumption. This means, that the bioenergy resource has been fully deployed and the relative share of bioenergy in renewables has decreased slightly. The study also included a survey to university students to map out how likely a carbon neutrality target is to be considered by 2035. University students were unsure of achieving the carbon neutrality target by 2035. The schedule was considered challenging especially in the transport sector. Bioenergy was also seen as still playing an important role, especially in heat production. Achieving significant emission reductions will require significant electrification in all energy use sectors, as fossil fuels cannot be sustainably replaced by bioenergy on a sufficiently large scale.
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