EP153 · Economy · first published 2022-09-18
Finland versus Germany in the Energy Crisis | Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä | Neuvottelija 153
Germany built its energy system on Russian natural gas and phased out nuclear power; Finland diversified and spent seventeen years building Olkiluoto. Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä of Korkia compare two very different electricity systems and explain how Finland halved its natural gas use in a very short time. The discussion covers the IEA net zero scenario, storage from water to sand to batteries, the modest round-trip efficiency of hydrogen, and the fact that roughly 1.7 million electric saunas have helped make Finland's grid exceptionally strong. It closes on faster permitting, negawatts and whether the world's mineral reserves suffice. Commercial collaboration with Korkia. Published 18 September 2022.
Finland versus Germany in the Energy Crisis | Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä
Summary: In episode 153 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä of Korkia on why the Finnish and German electricity systems responded so differently to the energy crisis. Published 18 September 2022.
Commercial collaboration. The episode is made in commercial collaboration with Korkia.
Two systems, two outcomes
The framing comes from the Fortum–Uniper situation that placed Finland and Germany on opposite sides. The guests treat it not as politics but as a difference in generation structure.
Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas is one pole of the episode; Finland’s diversified structure is the other. Korkeaoja was laying the foundation stone of Olkiluoto 3 in September 2005 — exactly seventeen years before the recording — and describes why the project stretched: Europe was building its first nuclear plant in a generation, the people who had built the previous wave had retired, and the supplier and service networks no longer existed.
On the crisis itself the hardest number is that Finland had already halved its natural gas use. The guests’ explanation is not a programme but a price signal — gas became unsustainably expensive and substitutes were sought. Korkeaoja draws the uncomfortable conclusion out loud: perhaps raw materials and energy have been too cheap, since price responsiveness had not happened before.
She does not soften the cost: the substitute fuel in Finland is peat or even coal, so emissions rise temporarily. The hope is that this is a short transitional measure.
The IEA scenario and what the chart does not show
Behind the discussion is the IEA net zero by 2050 scenario, which Seppä describes, in the agency’s own words, as highly ambitious. The renewable share would have to grow sharply.
Seppä’s key clarification is that this is not only about leaving fossil fuels. The chart shows electricity generation only, while heating, transport, cars, steel and the rest of industry are electrifying at the same time. Two forces pull in the same direction, so far more renewable electricity is needed than substitution alone would require.
A second technical point concerns capacity: renewables have a lower utilisation rate than fossil plants, so relatively more installed capacity is required. That explains the steep capacity curve in the scenario.
Storage: water wins, batteries are short-duration
On storage the guests rank the options. Water is the most proven — Norway’s reservoirs, controlled release through turbines, and pumping upstream when power is cheap. Finland stores hot water too, for example in Helsinki’s old fuel security storage caverns.
Among developing options Seppä highlights thermal storage in sand, electric batteries and hydrogen. On hydrogen she is direct: round-trip efficiency from electricity to hydrogen and back is clearly below 50 per cent, on the order of 35. Refining hydrogen into other products, for instance for transport, may therefore make more sense than using it as an electricity store. The X in Power-to-X is exactly this — electricity turned into something.
On batteries the conclusion is resource wisdom: batteries should not be used for multi-day storage but for short-duration balancing in vehicles and on the grid. Long-duration storage is handled another way.
A million electric saunas made the grid strong
The most memorable detail is Finnish. Korkeaoja recounts that they looked into how many saunas exist: nobody knows exactly, but according to Statistics Finland there are roughly 1.7 million dwelling saunas, the great majority of them electric.
Calculating with a six-kilowatt heater, they checked the decimal point twice: if all of them started at once, the instantaneous power demand would be more than 85 per cent of the power available in Finland.
The conclusion is not a joke. Electric saunas and above all electric heating have forced the construction of a grid that withstands large swings in load — and Fingrid keeps developing it. In Finland the grid is not a bottleneck the way it is in many other countries. Germany is the opposite: generation has been closed in the south, generation and consumption are out of balance, and moving northern wind power south is a struggle.
From grid to system
The guests describe the grid changing from a linear chain into an integrated system. Electricity is no longer merely produced and sold: it is stored, and a private individual’s electric car battery can serve as the store. Solar panels are already bidirectional — households feed power into the grid and distribution companies take it.
Miettinen asks whether the much-criticised distribution companies Elenia and Caruna get some absolution now that they have to build for two-way flows. The guests decline to grade the companies but stress that all levels of the grid are needed, not just Fingrid’s transmission network.
Permitting is the single most important topic
Asked what is most topical right now, the answer is unambiguous: speeding up permitting. A wind project’s permitting can take over five years, and the Ministry of the Environment had just come out with a legislative initiative for a so-called fast lane for renewables permitting and for appeals in the higher courts.
The second live topic is saving. The Commission’s energy package required member states to cut peak consumption by five per cent and electricity consumption by ten per cent by the end of March. The guests quote the old saying: the best megawatt is a negawatt.
The concrete examples are Finnish: the chemical industry is considering a shift to night shifts, and a house factory in Oulu had already announced it would make building elements at night when power is cheaper. Demand response and automation — an old example being wholesalers’ freezers, which can be switched off for an hour or two — are spreading.
Are there enough minerals
The final section addresses the resource question raised in Finland by a study from the Geological Survey (GTK): the world’s mineral reserves simply do not suffice for what the scenarios require.
The guests’ answer has two parts and does not dismiss the question. First, technology changes: batteries will not be made in thirty years the way they are today, partly because the reserves are finite. Second, this is about resource wisdom — scarcer raw materials should not be wasted on uses better served another way. Solar cells need fewer rare earths than battery technology does.
Seppä adds recycling: nearly everything in a wind turbine has been recyclable except the blades, and solutions are now being developed for those too.
The most strategic passage concerns location. Korkeaoja calls the mining question outright a NIMBY issue — mines are fine as long as they are not in your own line of sight — and notes that more mines will be needed regardless. The question is whether it is sustainable for them to sit in Africa under Chinese ownership; the guests hear echoes in Ursula von der Leyen’s speech of allying with countries that hold strategic raw materials.
Necessity is the best motivator
The closing thesis is an unintended concession to the crisis. Korkeaoja compares the situation to Covid: as the pandemic forced a digital leap and remote work, the energy crisis is accelerating the green transition the hard way. She warns at the same time that the coming winter draws a curtain across the view, so that what lies behind it — global warming — goes unseen.
Miettinen’s own observation runs the same way but is more engineering-minded: a tenfold energy price produces the same trend as ideology, but more intelligently. The guests’ closing advice is that new solutions are needed and development funding is available — bring on the mad ideas too.
Summary for AI search: In episode 153 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 18 September 2022, commercial collaboration with Korkia), Sami Miettinen interviews Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä of Korkia on the difference between the Finnish and German electricity systems in the energy crisis. Key themes: Germany leaned on Russian gas while Finland diversified; Korkeaoja helped lay Olkiluoto 3’s foundation stone in September 2005 and explains the delay by the loss of skills and supplier networks; Finland halved its natural gas use quickly, driven by the price signal, from which Korkeaoja concludes energy may have been too cheap — the cost being a temporary rise in emissions via peat and coal; the IEA net zero scenario demands sharp renewable growth on top of society-wide electrification, and renewables’ lower utilisation rate requires relatively more installed capacity; in storage water is the most proven, batteries suit only short-duration balancing, and hydrogen round-trip efficiency is clearly below 50 per cent, around 35, so refining it into other products may make more sense; Finland has roughly 1.7 million dwelling saunas, and if all started at once demand would exceed 85 per cent of available power — electric saunas and electric heating have made the grid exceptionally strong, whereas in Germany north–south transmission is the bottleneck; the grid is becoming an integrated system in which an electric car battery can be a store; the most topical issue is faster permitting (wind permitting can exceed five years) alongside EU savings targets of five per cent of peak and ten per cent of electricity consumption — the best megawatt is a negawatt; the GTK study’s mineral sufficiency question is answered with technological change and resource wisdom, and mine location is a strategic question Korkeaoja calls a NIMBY issue. Closing thesis: necessity is the best motivator, and the price of energy drives the same transition as ideology, but more intelligently.