While most of Europe is facing an energy crisis due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland has reported that its spot energy prices dropped below zero before noon and have sent into the negative. Jukka Russunen, the CEO of Finland’s grid operator told the Finnish public broadcast Yle that the average energy price for the day was “slightly” below zero. The price drop was driven by an unexpected surplus of renewable energy and the people in the country cutting back on energy use because of the current crisis due to the ongoing war.
Ruusunen said that Finland now has enough electricity and is almost emission-free and now people in the country can “feel good about using electricity.”
While the whole of Europe is dealing with the energy crisis, Finland is dealing with the opposite problem of poor energy supply. The energy suppliers may not be able to operate normally in the long run if the electricity is worth less than the cost of producing it. “Production that is not profitable at these prices is usually removed from the market,” Ruusunen said.
The excessive meltwater, which has raised flood warnings in several northern countries in Europe, is also pushing Finland’s hydroelectric plants into overdrive and giving plentiful electricity. Hydropower cannot be slowed down or turned off, other producers like nuclear are looking back on their production to avoid losing money on energy production.
A few months ago, the government of the country told its people to watch their energy consumption. Finland faced an energy crisis after it put sanctions on energy imports from its neighbour Russia as part of a global backlash for stopping the war with Ukraine. Now, the country has turned around with enough surplus.
Ruusunen also mentioned that last winter, the only thing people could talk about was where to get more electricity. “Now we are thinking hard about how to limit production. We have gone from one extreme to another,” he added.
Last month, Finland bought a new nuclear reactor which provided a significant new stream of power for around 5.5 million people in the country.
The country has set a goal to become carbon neutral by 2035 and has been pushing to introduce renewable energy solutions. Ruusunen shared with the National that Finland wanted the wind to become its primary power source by 2027.