Effect of major policy disruptions in energy system transition: Case Finland

Highlights: • The effect of political risks on energy system transition is studied. • The Finnish energy system is modelled with an hourly model. • Disruptions in nuclear power and biomass policies greatly affect the energy system. • Power-to-X, in particular Power-to-Heat, is found to be vital in most scenarios. - Abstract: Finland has ambitious climate targets and intends to ban the use of coal and halve the oil use by 2030, mainly based on traditional forest biomass and nuclear power. These policy choices, however, encompass sizeable risks for a low-carbon energy transition. Here we investigate alternative pathways for disruptive risks from such policies based on massive introduction on variable renewable electricity (VRE) with intersectoral coupling through Power-to-X technologies (P2X), also considering future demand uncertainties. We analyzed several risk-involving scenarios for years 2030 and 2050 using a national energy system model with 1-h resolution, which includes power, heat and fuel sectors. The results indicate that even in case of worst-case energy policy risks with nuclear and bioenergy, a feasible energy system solution can be found. Renewable energy resources were employed to their maximum potential levels with P2X flexibility options, especially Power-to-Heat. However, without energy efficiency measures, the present renewable energy resource base was not able to compensate for all primary energy fall-out, which would lead to higher system costs and CO₂ emissions. This implies that in case of high dominance of a few energy sources, an alternative pathway may require strong energy efficiency measures and developing further the renewable energy resource base.