Indicators of CO2 emissions and energy efficiency: Comparison of Finland with other countries

The generic technology options recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions include efficiency improvements both in the supply and use of energy, switching to less carbon-intensive fuels, and switching to renewable energy resources. The present study considers, using indi-cators based on statistics, to which extent these options are already being utilized in various OECD countries. The efficiency of energy production is high in Finland, due to extensive utilization of cogeneration of electricity and heat both for industry and for the tertiary and residential sectors. The use of sustainably produced biomass for combined heat and power generation is the largest in the world. About 10% of the total national electricity production is generated using wood-derived fuels and modern power plant technologies. Improvements in the energy efficiency of manufacturing industries during the last twenty years in Finland are similar to the average in OECD countries, and the relative decrease in CO2 intensity has been more rapid than that in the OECD as a whole. In the manufacturing of pulp and paper, and iron and steel, Finnish industries are among the most efficient; however, the differences in energy inten-sities among the countries considered are relatively small in these sectors. The energy use and CO2 emissions attributable to the Finnish residential sector are low, despite the cold climate, due to good insulation of houses and cogene-ration of heat and power. If the dependency of heating energy demand on climatic conditions is accounted for using heating degree-day corrections, the values for Finland are among the lowest among the western industrialized nations. The energy demand in Finland for the transport sector is in general relatively low; in particular, the energy use in road freight transport per tonne-kilometer is the lowest of the countries studied.