Finland - a power success story?

Hello listeners and welcome to Plugged In, the Energy News podcast from Montel, where we bring the latest news, issues, and changes happening in the energy sector. Last week in Helsinki, at the Eurelectric Summit, the annual gathering of the power industry, I sat down with Marcus Rauramo, CEO of Fortune & president of Eurelectric to discuss some of the biggest challenges facing the sector. From expectations of rising electricity demand driven by AI, as well as traditional industry, to energy security, infrastructure investment, and geopolitical risks, companies across Europe are facing a rapidly changing landscape.

I'm delighted to be joined by Elias Huuhtanen, who is our Finland correspondent. A warm welcome to the Plugged In podcast to you, Elias. Thanks. It's great to be here.

I'd like to start off, Elias, by talking about energy security. You know, over the past few weeks, and you know, we've seen a lot of discussions around the Strait of Hamuz, ongoing pressure in energy markets, and and and cyber threats and real threats to energy infrastructure. Why is energy security suddenly at the at the back on the top of the agenda in Europe? Well, I think Europe as a continent, we've kind of woken up from this globalist dream that we've had for the past few decades.

That we used to think that more interconnectedness, more trade with our partners and getting closer meant that everyone's eventually gonna become liberal democracies and we're gonna work together and we'll be happily living ever after. But the past few years have kind of shown that that has been a massive miscalculation. We're now faced with the reality of we're trying to switch away from Russian gas from one unreliable partner and we're replacing it with uh US LNG. And now we realize that what we used to think as an a trustworthy partner is now threatening to invade Greenland.

So it's not great, it's just another dependency. Renewable sector, for example, it's completely dependent on Chinese components. There's gigawatts and gigawatts of power connected through these inverters into the grid. And as we saw from Spain from last year, for example, it doesn't take a lot for this cascading.

A small problem can lead to this cascading chain of events that sees half a continent in a blackout. So we're just hoping, crossing our fingers, that the Chinese haven't left some kind of a backdoor or easy access for hackers to get in. Because we didn't think about that. We wouldn't think that would be an issue ten years ago, ten five years ago.

And it's also it's not just theoretical in the Baltic Sea region, Finland, we've seen actual incidents, starting off with the Nord Stream explosions. We've seen Baltic Connector gas pipeline get destroyed, S-link, power link between Finland and Estonia, telecoms cables. So there's a lot of stuff happening, and we've kind of realized now that energy security is actually it's very important that we haven't taken care of it. Excellent, Elias.

Thank you for that. I think that's you know, it's a bit of a wake-up call that that we are getting here in Europe, absolutely. But you know, we were in Finland, Elias, we're focusing on the Finnish power market, and it's often lauded as a success story and as an example for other energy markets to follow. What is it that Finland has got right?

There's one thing that Finland is good at, it's preparing for the worst. You know, I don't know if it's the cold and dark winters or it's a close proximity to Russia and the centuries of warring. But Finns are very good at planning for the future. And it's evident in things like it's one of the highest bunkers per capita rates in the world, massive fuel storages and food storages to last months and months.

But it's also been a big benefit for the energy sector. You know, grid investments, for example, they are planned in advance with this very long time horizons, ten decades in advance, which has really resulted in the finished grid being quite in a quite a good position at the moment and you know trying to figure out where the demand and supply are gonna be located in five, ten years. So effectively we now have one of the fastest data center delivery times. We have no price zones, for example.

And yeah, this kind of long-term planning has definitely been a very good advantage for Finland. It was also evident during the energy crisis in the gas markets. You had we Finland phased out of Russian gas and then it was left with the reality of having only one only the Baltic Connector gas pipeline as the main source of or the only source of gas into Finland. So thinking in advance or planning ahead, Finland procured this floating LNG terminal in early 2023, and it was just in time before the Baltic Connector Pipeline was destroyed in late 2023.

So this forward thinking and planning ahead averted this uh Finland running out of gas essentially. Another aspect I think is this culture of cooperation. You know, it's a multi-party democracy, people are very used to cooperating across party lines and ideological divides to reach compromises and solutions. And I think Olkeluato nuclear power plant, for example, is a good example.

You had it's owned jointly by both actors in the power producing sector and the Finnish industry. And they came together in the 60s and decided that we we need more power. So one way we we just come together, we we own it jointly, finance it with private money and make it happen. And it's actually quite a unique solution where the operator is a non-profit, jointly owned by these industrial actors, just with the aim of producing affordable power that can be shared by all the owners.

It's quite a I think it's a good example of this kind of culture of cooperation. Elias, we've got so much to learn from the Finns. Thank you very much for being a guest on the Montel Plugged In podcast. Thank you.

That was Montel's correspondent Elias Huuhtanen. As Europe looks to balance growing electricity demand, affordability, security, and decarbonisation, many are looking to Finland as an example of how that transition can be managed. Markus Rauramo and I discuss what lessons the rest of Europe can learn and what are the biggest challenges still ahead. I'm delighted to be joined by Marcus Rauramo, who's CEO of Fortum, and also the president of Eurelectric.

A warm welcome to you, Markus. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I think we have to start off by congratulating Finland on winning the Ice Hockey World Cup.

Thank you. That's very appropriate, and as you know, it's a very big thing for us. So fifth time won against every every country in the tournament, resulting in 80,000 people celebrating with with the team when they came back. I bet there are some sore heads the next morning.

I'm sure there are, and and now the editorials are forecasting that uh this will lead to economic recovery and growth in Finland. So that tells something about the importance. So it's a win-win for everybody, Markus. I also have a slight disclaimer at the start, because I'm a Fortum customer, so at my little summer stuga in Sweden.

So just that's out there so that people people realize that as well. But , I want to start first of all uh by talking about AI and data centers, Marcus. How I mean we we hear a lot about the rise in demand, forecast rise in demand, hasn't yet quite materialized in that in the way that some forecast. So but how how materially do you think that AI and data centers electrification will change Europe's power demand over the next decade?

So for for AI and data centers, there are two sides of the coin. And and we have called it in Euroelectric AI for power and power for AI. When we look at from my company point of view, when we look at where where is the new demand coming from? So it's actually coming from across the sectors: steel, metals, chemicals, data centers, battery factories, e-mobility.

So in the long run, we don't expect that data centers will be the biggest source of new demand. But yeah, here right here uh today, uh, and the growth is you could say more incremental. So data centers are being built block by block. Uh they will they will of course uh increase the the power demand.

But from where we stand, we see that the market is well able to supply or to also supply the new power needed. And I'll give the you know our example from our company. So we see demand coming our way, and we have been preparing with sites, with grid access, powered land, we have eight gigawatts of renewables in permitting, two and a half gigawatts of flexibility in the works, plus pumped hydro and new nuclear. So the message to all of our customer segments is that we can answer this supply or demand need with new supply.

Now for Europe, of course this is not the situation everywhere. So what we will need is massive investments in grid, not only for data centers, but for for other sectors as well. So grid investments, investment in new supply, permitting zoning, uh tripartite agreements with with the EU and with with the customers, this is needed. So that's the power for AI part.

Then AI for power is is critically important. So we're moving towards a more renewables-dominated intermittent energy system with a lot of intermittent power, distributed production and also potentially hundreds of millions of customer appliances connected to the grid that you can control and steer. We need that flexibility for the system to work. But that's not going to work with the way we are used to with very large dispatchable power production and big consumption units.

So we need to get these hundreds of millions of appliances and the distributed production integrated, and that will need a lot of digitalization, a lot of use of AI. That will open up the possibility to integrate more of the new type of power into the system. And in Finland, is there, are data centers a big feature of demand growth? They are part of the demand growth.

And you hear announcements tens of megawatts, hundreds of megawatts of data centers. Actually, the biggest announcement recently in the public is actually a new aluminium smelter that ArcTL is planning on the West Coast, who would have a one one gigawatt capacity, nine terawatt hours of electricity demand per year. So that's bigger than any data center announcement so far. That just tells you a little bit of the multitude of different sectors in the market.

Absolutely. It's the traditional industry versus the new industry up and coming. And how and not and not versus Exactly, working to working together and integration, supporting each other. And how is that perceived in in Finland, for example?

I know that data centers in some parts of Europe and the world are perceived a little bit negatively. What's the public perception of them in Finland? We have the same discussion in Finland going on. So there's a concern overall of the availability of energy and the avail the adequacy of capacity.

But again our message is that with the land availability, with the grid access availability, with the infrastructure and uh OEM competence, construction competence, we can accommodate a massive uh amount of growth. So these are the two stories that are out there. But of course the proof is in the pudding. So we need to show the customers that this is the case.

But if we take a little look into history, the Finnish electricity demand has grown four times since the 70s. And so has the supply. And now the the system is 96% CO2 free and the energy cost is one of the lowest in Europe. So you can have it's a proof that you can have decarbonised growth and very affordable energy prices.

So people should look to Finland, Markus. It is an example of how to do it, and one lesson is that there have been a couple of things. One is the very long-term nature of thinking. So we took a decision on, for example, on exiting all coal 15 years ago by 2029.

And now it's out already. Then the other one is is technology agnosticity. So Finland has been all the time open for hydropower, for nuclear power, for batteries, for renewables, storage, flexibility, biomass, waste to energy. So as long as it's CO2-free, it's all okay to have in the system.

Is that Finnish pragmatism coming into play? Maybe you could you maybe you could call it that pragmatism and then then kind of confidence in that tech we understand technologies, so we can evaluate if they're clean and safe, then they then they can all be used. And there is a big tradition of a lot of people, a lot of families engaged in very heavy industries and knowing that symbiosis between energy production, material-intensive businesses, forest use, land use, metals, and mining, and then still living in harmony with the nature.

And you would know that , like in Sweden, basically almost all Finnish families have a summer house, so you see all the time how what you do at work, how it impacts your surroundings, your environment, your nature. So the feedback loop loop is immediate, and you take responsibility of everything in one go. Another important point is that you know you have a population that is you know largely pro-nuclear as well. So that's not been so much of a discussion out there as been in other in other countries.

Markus, I'd like to turn to look at the the the um the challenges ahead, if you like. And talking about the Nordic region, Finland in particular, is it prepared for the scale of infrastructure investments that is needed to support that growth and demand and also the renewables that or clean power that need to match that? The quantum of the challenge is understood. Then the responses vary country by country.

Now, if I zoom in on Finland, we work as a company, we work very closely hand in hand with FinGrid and the DSOs. I mentioned already earlier the site development for industrial use. So we have been preempting uh the growth in demand and growth in supply with say with the 10-year horizon. And so we have with with FinGrid, we have found places where there is actually space and redundancy in the grid so that we can as fast as possible get get new loads in and then help the TSO and the DSOs to anticipate the investments.

This is not to say that it's easy, but then you can shorten the connection distances, you can anticipate more. We make down payments for the new connections years in advance so that actually the DSO and TSO can start building. And an example of what that means in practice is that we started almost 10 years ago to develop generic sites for data centers in the capital region. So we developed a cluster of three sites, and eventually Microsoft came in and is now building three times 200 megawatt data center cluster.

We will be the heat off taker, we'll have the world's largest heat offtake and be heating a big part of Espo, the second biggest city in Finland, with that heat, but we enabled the three times 200 megawatt connection preemptively without knowing exactly who would come there. This is the way of anticipating the demand. So now we're thinking about what you would do for the late 20s or early 30s. That's very interesting, Markus, because obviously it in some areas, some regions it's done the other way around, and maybe that creates a lot more of the logistical issues around permitting and all the delays, etc.

Now, very interesting indeed. I think but if we talk now about sort of a little bit about the wider energy market and geopolitics, and how is Finland exposed to what's happening in the Gulf region? Less so than many other European countries, and that that goes down back to the energy independency. So there's more homegrown electricity to start with, and then the mix between electricity and gas in the system is roughly two-thirds or three-quarters of electricity and one-quarter or one-third of gas.

So the gas dependency to start with was less than I mentioned the technology agnosticity. So the toolbox has been bigger, so there are different types of electricity that are very independent of imported inputs. And finally, with regards to the gas, we were very quick actually to convert our old coal-fired power plants port into an LNG port, so that then the gas operators actually invested in a floating rigas unit and placed it in our former coal harbour. So now Finland has the also the LN like massive LNG import possibility.

And then on to LNG, I think if we see we've seen already that with the Strait or Hormuz is closed and there is serious disruptions to global LNG shipments, the straits remain closed, and I'm sure by the time we you know we're recording this in early June, but by the time we publish this episode, who knows? But do you think we're in danger of another energy price shock in Europe if they you know they've already been closed now for three to four months, could be longer? So we moved as Europe, we moved from a dependency on Russian pipeline gas to let's say long with long-term contracts to spot priced LNG from the Middle East and US and elsewhere.

So we have been now structurally much more exposed to the short-term price volatility than we were before. If the Hormuz Strait continues to be closed for a long time, the risks are increasing. So gastroid filling rates are lower than they have been for the last couple of years. So you know, we'll see how the winter plays out, how cold will it be?

But the redundancy in the system is certainly less than it has been now for a couple of years or before the Ukraine war broke out. Unless there are any other pressures on either on food, on fertilizers, on the chemicals, on you know, and the inflationary risk is is very strong, I think, and then probably quite worrying. If I think about any company who I know after the 21-22 experiences, you know, people are much better equipped with financial liquidity, stronger balance sheets, prepared for volatility.

So if there was a similar shock as we had in 21-22, everybody's better prepared for that. But that's , you know, that hopefully this will be one of the last energy price shocks that we see. But you know, we also see, I've heard my colleagues talk about the security threats in Helsinki, drones appearing a few weeks ago. How serious are these hybrid threats facing Europe's infrastructure?

And of course, both physical and cyber, and and you are of Finland, you are on the front line, you have that 1400-1500 kilometre border with Russia. As a company and as a nation, we are aware of hybrid cyber, you know, kinetic threats and these are in the system and our kind of lesson and and advice is that first you start with good situation awareness and being very open that what is actually happening. So calling a spade a spade. Then having very good authority contacts and we talk with police, with security police, military rescue authorities.

So that we know who we work with when something happens. And the third very important element is to exercise. So exercise both how do you counter threats, how do you deal with an event happening, and how do you recover. And we have been doing in very big scale way before the war in Ukraine for decades.

Maybe that's part of the you know where we are as a nation. And being being also very dependent on both exports and imports across the sea. So we're practically an island. So being ready for disruptions is in the nature.

And for the company, being a nuclear company, that's part of the preparedness anyway. So we have not so much been preparing for military threats, but then for any kind of unusual event. Doesn't matter what it is, it's the impact and the recovery that count. As Eurelectric, we took this also very seriously.

So, first as Fortum and then as Eurelectric, we actually wanted to understand better what the kinetic impact on infrastructure really means. So we started to study what has been happening in Ukraine. And now Eurelectric published the most downloaded report ever by Euroelectric battle-tested power systems that draw on the drew on the lessons from Ukraine. And the key lesson was that there have been 4,000 attacks on critical infrastructure.

And the the lessons we are taking away is that well, how do you prepare? How do you reinforce your critical equipment? How do you protect your employees? How do you then repair your assets?

And these are the lessons we are sharing then across our membership, also sharing this with the EU and the governments. So this is just taking responsibility of what we are doing to make our assets available and reliable to towards our customers in any circumstances. Have you, as a company or as a country, seen an increase in these kind of cyber attacks and attempts to sabotage the sort of energy infrastructure that you control or operate? So out of these threats that we spoke about, cyber is definitely the most frequent.

And the cyber frequency is very high. And this was also going on before the before the war in Ukraine. I got a touch wood here but our asset availabilities are very good. So able to to keep out the cyber and hybrid and kinetic threats, but that means being awake uh continuously all the time.

And again, we're agnostic to where the threat is coming from. That doesn't matter to us. What matters is that how do we how do we protect our assets and how do we recover when something happens? 100%.

And I think that's absolutely critical. What about, have you increased like the security around key pieces of infrastructure sort of since the since the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Have you maintaining, you know, you obviously have critical infrastructure, big centralized plants, even we see what an attack on a substation in Berlin can do to not just to the electricity grid and to blackouts, but into perceive people's perception of threat. We continuously change our response.

So we adapt it continuously, depending on what kind of cyber hybrid, kinetic, espionage, drones, whatever satellite disruption there is. So all of these have been happening. So we have our own security, we have outsourced security, then the security authorities all the way to the military. And we're continuously adapting it.

That goes back to the situation awareness, authority contact, and training. So you have all of these three and you continuously update that. So it's a continuously changing picture. And you have that mindset of certainly amongst the population you've been doing it for decades, as you say, here in Finland.

Absolutely, and as a company we have dozens of exercises per year. I think you know Finland moved very quickly away from Russian energy dependency. What lessons can the rest of Europe learn from the Finnish experience? It goes back for me, it goes back to the to having the widest possible clean technology toolbox.

So being technology agnostic and then having the long-term thinking, and by that creating redundancy and options. So you can change, you can have more hydro, more nuclear, more renewables, more biomass, more waste to energy, and and really allowing the market to innovate the solutions. You know, take take clear political decisions, what you want to do, what you want to achieve, and let the market sort it out. So so maximize the amount of capital that can actually solve the the issues and address the potential that there is.

But again, if I look at how has this how is this looking from a Finnish and Nordic point of view, what we see in front of us is a huge opportunity. Again, I go back to the to the like thousand-year industrial history in the Nordics, from starting from you know copper mining in in Dalana a thousand years ago, being an industrial superpower with fantastic grids, railroads, roads, and the all the competence that that people have and the suppliers that you have. So when we now look at the years ahead of us, it's a potential to leverage this this competence and the resources and the knowledge that people have.

So my message to our customers also is that we can supply you any amount of energy you need. And and it's clean, reliable, and affordable. And I haven't had to regret that. Okay.

I'm just wondering on the last point there on affordability, because that's absolutely crucial here, isn't it? We you know, in terms of keeping populists at bay, for example, but also making sure that people have have clean, affordable energy. What can Fortum and the industry do to ensure that that's the case, Marcus? So we are in very tight dialogue with our customers.

That's Fortum's number one priority, and that's Eurelectric's number one priority. And we take tailored approaches to the different sectors. Okay, we have data centers who need additional power, they can make long-term contracts, we have incumbent heavy industries who have short-term issues, short pricing cycles, they need different kinds of solutions. We have consumers who may want optionality, some want spot contracts, want to optimize their own use, some want long-term price security.

So tailoring solutions for everybody, explaining how they work, how you can get lower cost by being flexible. That goes down to the affordability. So we are in constant dialogue and explaining what the future technology looks like. When can we deliver very low-cost megawatt hours, and when are the megawatt hours expensive, and how can you impact that by adjusting your industrial processes or adjusting your use at home?

When do you charge your EV? When do you put your sauna on, or when do you run your aluminium smelter? And by that being very preemptive, forward-looking, saying that, you know, this is what's going to happen five years, ten years from now. And if you build your process like this, we can provide you actually a very, very good and affordable product.

And it's all about communicating that, isn't it? Not just to customers but to the public at large, because if they they're not aware of this, I mean just charging the EV now is is far cheaper than going to the pump. Finland is a great example. So just by consumer flexibility, the market flex is almost plus minus ten percentage points up and down, and the prices are very volatile.

Last year we had prices between minus 500 euro per megawatt hour up to 2,000 euro per megawatt hour, and consumer and industrial consumption follows that. Absolutely. What but what's the investment climate like given that kind of volatility and quite challenging market conditions in some areas, which is we see a lot of curtailment, we see you know oversupply, negative prices. How can you encourage more more supply and investment into those kind of market conditions?

The technology is there. Financing is abundantly available. The question is the bankability indeed. So how do you get the predictability in into the investments?

One way of doing it is to have it customer PPA backed that gives that gives long-term bankability. But what the EU has heavily engaged on is the tripartite spirit of uh enabling CFDs, guarantees, construction time loans and helping to bridge these gaps that then exist between suppliers and customers. So by by pulling all of this together. But but the key message from Euroelectric is that we're an industry who has a history of deploying hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of capital, and we love to do it for our customers.

What we need is some visibility, some bankability, but we're super committed to providing the reliable, affordable, clean power to our customers. I'm sure that that's a fantastic message, Markus. But if I can round round off and say and ask you, so if we're five years down the line and you look back at your tenor as C EO of Fortune, what would you think would make you most proud? Helping our customers to grow.

Perfect. Perfect. Very, very, very clear straight to the point, Markus. Fantastic.

Thank you very much for being a guest on the Plugged In Podcasts, Markus Rauramo. It was a pleasure, thank you so much. And to you listeners, thanks for listening to this episode of Plugged In. If you enjoyed this discussion, please like, rate, and follow to make sure you get the latest podcast episodes as soon as we release them every Thursday.

We'd also love to read your reviews of the podcasts. It helps us to keep up to date with what you, our listeners, think of the podcast and what content you want to receive more of. Finally, you can head to montelnews.com for more news and analysis from our team of journalists across Europe and beyond.

See you next time.