Like many OECD countries, Finland faces the simultaneous tasks of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), adapting to a warmer world and reversing the trend of weakening productivity growth. Meeting these challenges requires increasing the size of forest carbon sinks, better policy recognition of biodiversity and overcoming financing, regulatory and skills barriers to decarbonising industry.
Finland is not on course to meet its ambitious land-use emissions mitigation and biodiversity targets. Higher harvesting and better measurement mean Finland’s forests (including soil emissions) are a net emitter of GHG. Meanwhile, biodiversity is coming under increasing pressure from warmer weather and greater land-use claims from industry, mining and tourism, especially in the Arctic.
The cheapest way for Finland to achieve GHG and biodiversity targets lies in reducing emissions and increasing carbon sinks on agricultural and forestry land. Priority should be on implementing measures to boost forest growth and reduce soil emissions, including through subsidies, mobilising private funding via voluntary carbon markets and regulation.
The climate adaptation policy framework is advanced but adaptation and biodiversity needs have less priority than economic development. Biodiversity objectives should be legislated and more resources devoted to planning in the Arctic to put these objectives on a more joint and level footing with economic growth.
A ready supply of cheap renewable electricity means Finland has more potential than most OECD countries to take advantage of the green industrial transition. The transition is already well underway in Finland and even if only a modest share of its massive potential to generate renewable electricity is built (Figure?3), it would provide the foundation for energy-intensive low emissions production in Finland at a scale that could feed into EU-wide value chains. Ensuring energy security in a system with more volatile renewables will require incentives to invest in more reliable generation and storage systems.
Beyond renewable electricity, there is high uncertainty about which low-emissions technologies will prevail in the long run. This calls for using technologically neutral government support such as R&D credits, which the Finnish government has introduced.
Insufficient policy recognition in Finland and the EU of low-emissions technologies dampens the incentive to innovate and invest in them. Emissions accounting is often based on basic rules of thumb that fail to reflect actual emissions reductions of new technologies. The benefits of carbon storage in solid form are not yet recognised in the European Union. With its large potential in the green industrial transition, Finland should be in the vanguard and work with its Nordic peers to improve emissions accounting methods so they recognise the emissions reduction benefits over the whole life cycle of new products or processes.