Views on Finnish energy technology programmes. Environmentally viable results for energy production

摘要

Finland's exports of energy technology have been growing dynamically over the past few years and they have now exceeded net imports of oil. Highly efficient technology has not only been applied to the national energy economy but also exported to more than 140 other countries. Finnish skills in this field are the result of many traditional factors: the cold climate, long distances between towns, energy-intensivity industry and the lack of fossil fuels in Finland. In addition to these geographical and natural factors, Finnish expertise in energy has been radically influenced by especially favourable organizational and institutional conditions: the mechanisms for competition in the domestic marketplace ant strong networking both in Finland and abroad. The small home market has also been a stimulus for exports. Finland's potential new subdivisions of energy fields include automation and IT for energy production systems, which is based on strong Finnish expertise and success in information technology. Another new field with potential is photoelectric systems, an area in which Finland is already well placed on the market. The extensive utilization of solar energy in northern latitudes calls for the seasonal storage of energy. The use of hydrogen as a means of storing solar power has been studied with good results in the NEMO 2 Technology Programme. In addition Finland put great emphasis on renewable energy sources like biomass, combustion processes and environmental technologies related to the energy sector. Harvesting and utilisation of biomass has been studied in the national BIOENERGIA programme. Combustion processes have been studied in the LIEKKI 2 programme. A variety of different energy related environmental technologies have been studied in the S1HTI 2 programm.