Finnish clean energy companie bet big on India

HELSINKI: Finnish companies are looking at India's renewable energy market to offer power from municipal waste, a technology in which the European country has excelled.

At several locations in Finland, companies, including Vantaa Energy and Ekokem, have set up medium-sized plants that burn municipal waste to generate power. Both companies are looking at India and will showcase their projects to Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal and his team when he visits Finland in a few weeks, said officials from the Finnish power department.

The 200-MW plant at Vantaa, a town adjacent to Finnish capital Helsinki, is 40% owned by the City of Helsinki and 60% owned by the City of Vantaa. Electricity from the plant is also sold on the European energy exchange.

“About 80% of the waste is burned and the residue is used as material for building walls and roads,“ said Sallamaari Rapo, a process engineer at Vantaa Energy's plant. “Air circulation in the plant is controlled in a way to make sure that the stink does not get emitted into the atmosphere and an electrostatic precipitator takes care of the emissions.“

Finland does not have fossil fuels and neither can it depend on solar power since availability of the Sun is an issue due to the varying weather in the country.

As much as 25% of Finland's power generation is fuelled by wood and waste material, followed by oil at 24% and nuclear energy by 19%. Coal contributes about 8% of the country's power generation. “We buy around 20% of our power from the European power market. Finland does not need to be self-sufficient in power generation, because the power exchanges offer the opportunity to buy cheap power at times which the country wants to cash in on when the opportunity arises,“ said Riku Huttunen, director general of Finland's energy department.

While Vantaa Energy does not segregate the waste it receives, Ekokem at Riihimäki has specialised in separating trash for burning or recycling. Ekokem specialises in processing industrial and military-grade waste.

“We segregate plastics that can be used for making plastic products, metals as well as other components that can fetch better market value,“ said Petri Onikki, technical director at Ekokem.

Ekokem specialises in processing industrial and military-grade waste. In a one-off project, the company destroyed a few tonnes of Syrian chemical weapons that were shipped to its facility in Riihimäki. In another project, it is being sent hexachlorobenzene, a toxic chemical once used to treat a fungal disease on wheat, from Australia for disposal in Riihimäki. The initial shipment of 135 tonnes is expected to arrive in December.