Combined Heat and Power Plants

As oil prices have risen, the numbers of small heating plants fuelled with bioenergy have also increased steeply. Finland’s climate change mitigation targets will necessitate further increases in the use of renewable energy over the coming years, and many facilities that presently use oil will have to be converted or rebuilt to use biomass fuels.

Small-scale combined heat and power (CHP) plants typically have a capacity of 1-2 MW electricity and 3-5 MW heat. Burning biogas in gas turbines or combustion engines is at the moment the most viable way to produce heat and power on a small scale.

Heating businesses produce renewable heat energy on a local scale, typically in small heating plants that burn wood chips, pellets or mixtures of these fuels. Such businesses most commonly supply heat for municipal district heating schemes. Such schemes enable Finnish municipalities to exploit locally produced renewable energy from their own forests or nearby forests.

Many new local heating businesses have been launched in Finland in recent years. By the beginning of 2009 around 400 such local heating schemes were in operation. It has been estimated that around the country there is potential for a total of around 1,000 similar schemes.