Natural gas consumption more than halved last year, and the gap was patched with coal and oil.
Russian the disruption of energy supplies last year increased the use of oil and coal for heating in Finland, according to recent statistics from the Energy Industry.
The use of natural gas in Finland decreased to less than half of the usual, mainly due to the high price but also due to the interruption of gas supplies from Russia. Russia cut off pipeline gas deliveries to Finland in May.
In the production of district heating, natural gas was replaced above all by more polluting coal, but also to some extent by oil.
Despite this, carbon dioxide emissions from district heating decreased by 7 percent from the previous year to 3.7 million tons. This is due to the fact that the demand for heat clearly decreased from the previous year due to the mild weather. The heating season was 0.4 degrees above normal and about 1.2 degrees warmer than the previous year. Part of the decrease in heat demand could also be due to citizens’ energy-saving measures.
Russian the interruption of energy supplies affected the production of district heating in Finland also through the fact that Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine stopped the import of Russian wood to Finland. At the beginning of the year, about a quarter of the wood fuel used in Finland came from Russia.
It was believed that replacing Russian imports would increase the use of peat in Finland, but the opposite happened: the share of peat in the production of district heating even decreased by a percentage point from the previous year.
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