Finland's last active coal-fired power and heat plant shuts down

By Anne Kauranen

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's last coal-fired power and heat plant in active production will shut down permanently on Tuesday, enabling Helsinki energy group Helen to cut its emissions and put an end to rising energy costs for its customers, its chief executive said.

Finland's renewable power and heat production capacity, such as wind and solar, has increased rapidly in the past few years, leading to a collapse in the use of coal after the previous government in 2019 passed a law to ban coal from 2029.

"Of course, we cannot say that not a single gramme of coal will be burned in Finland anymore, because there are various crisis situation solutions, but this is indeed Finland's last coal power plant that is in daily production use," Helen CEO Olli Sirkka told Reuters.

To replace the annual production 175 MW of power and 300 MW of heat by the Salmisaari plant being phased out, Helen will use electricity, waste heat and heat pumps and continue to burn pellets and wood chips, the company said.

"In the long term, we intend to eliminate all burning," Sirkka said, adding that the company aims to have its emissions at 5% of their 1990 level by 2030 and to end all burning by 2040.

Helen, which is owned by the capital Helsinki, is the last Finnish power producer to stop using coal because sufficient alternative clean production was not previously available to cater for the city's needs, Sirkka said.

On cold winter days, Helsinki's heating alone eats up 20% of the country's total power production, he said.

"It is perhaps necessary to admit that a clean transition does not come cheaply. It is indeed a value choice, and it is one that we have made both as a society and as Helen," he said.

He added, however, that despite the clean transition, Finland has Europe's third-cheapest electricity after Sweden and Norway, and that Helen expects the total average price of district heating to decrease by 5.8% on average for its customers this year.

The shutdown will allow Helen to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 50% from last year and Finland's total emissions by nearly 2%, it said.

Environmental campaigners Beyond Fossil Fuels pointed out that Finland's coal exit was "near total", with two small plants elsewhere in Finland still using some coal in their output and a third coal plant remaining in strategic use for emergencies or consumption peaks.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Hugh Lawson)