The CEO of Stora Enso, Jouko Karvinen, agrees with Finland’s goal to raise the bioenergy share in total energy production, but he demands that the Finnish decision makers have to make sure that the biomass pricing does not unreasonably escalate at the same time.
There has been a lively discussion lately about the relevance of forest biomass to Finnish energy production. While Finnish government and Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen in particular, want to increase the share of forest biomass in the energy production by subsidizing it, the pulp industry is worried about how it will affect the supply of pulpwood and its price.
“After all, chemical pulping mills are responsible for 70 per cent of renewable energy in Finland,” argues Jouko Karvinen, the CEO of Stora Enso, “and therefore Finnish renewable energy level is multiple times higher than EU average. It must be secured that subsidizing one form of bioenergy does not threaten the already existing production”, he...