The climate goals demanded by Finland’s Extinction Rebellion (Elokapina) climate movement are impossible to achieve in five years, although their sentiment is on the right track, one expert has told Yle.
The group is calling for the government to make Finland carbon neutral by the year 2025 instead of the current goal of 2035, creating a 10-year gulf between targets.
Carbon neutrality means that Finland will release only as much carbon into the atmosphere as forests can trap from the air, for example.
Yle asked Karoliina Auvinen, a specialist with the Finnish Environment Institute’s (Syke) climate and climate protection unit whether or not the climate activists’ goal is realistic. Her response was simply "No."
Although Auvinen said that she doesn’t believe the climate activists’ goal of carbon neutrality by 2025 is feasible, she noted that their message is important.
"The change that is happening now should have started 20 years ago," she pointed out.
"Change needs to happen now. Extinction Rebellion is right about that," she added.
Auvinen is a member of a research group that has simulated and plotted how Finland could be fossil fuel-free and even carbon neutral by 2040.
1. Phasing out the use of fossil fuels in five years unlikely
The biggest source of emissions in Finland is energy production. This includes activities such as electricity and heating, as well as industrial activity and transportation.
According to Auvinen, for Finland to be fossil fuel-free by 2040, wind power production would have to be 16 times higher than in 2018. This would mean the construction of 5,000 new wind farms.
"When we take the entire chain into consideration and what building a wind farm requires, from permits, zoning and environmental and noise impact assessments, then depending on the case, that could take up to 10 years," Auvinen pointed out.
Meanwhile, solar energy production would have to increase by a factor of 300 for a fossil fuel-free Finland. The number seems unattainable, in part because the comparison year for the model was 2018, when solar power had not yet gained a firm foothold in Finland.
2. Up to 50,000 old cars would have to be renewed annually
A fossil fuel-free Finland by 2040 would also mean much newer cars on Finland’s roads. Auvinen ran a 2018 simulation covering the Uusimaa region that featured more than one million petrol and diesel vehicles. This represented slightly more than a quarter of the country’s entire vehicle population.
According to the model, about 50,000 motorists would have to switch to electric or biogas cars every year to achieve the goal of fossil fuel-free traffic.
"And if we miss this number in any given year, we will have to catch up in subsequent years," Auvinen noted.
The researcher said that the problem comes down to the fact that the world has not yet been able to mass produce electric cars and the batteries they require. She said that getting to that point would have required political decisions to be made a long time ago.
"Now this transformation in transport has finally kicked off, but it means that there will be a mad rush to 2035," Auvinen said of the numbers.
She pointed out that at the end of the day once production is properly up and running, manufacturing an electric vehicle would likely take less time than an internal combustion vehicle.
According to the simulation of Finland in 2040, 80 percent of vehicles would be electric while the rest would be powered by biogas or synthetic fuels produced using wind or solar power.
Listen to climate strikers discuss their goals on the All Points North podcast. You can listen via the embedded player here, Yle Areena, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your usual podcast player using the RSS feed. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the APN newsletter.
