In the Jungle of Renewable Energy (2009-07-02)
Author: Kati Ala-Ilomäki
Renewable energy is the business of the future. Some people are even talking about a new industrial revolution. Jyväskylä’s higher-education institutes and local businesses have got a head start.
Nuclear energy is not the answer. At least not when trying to find a solution to providing everyone with energy in the future, or when asking about the issue from a professor working on the renewable energy, Jouko KorppiTommola. ‘Predictions show that the consumption of energy is set to grow globally around 50% by the year 2030. According to my own calculations, that would mean building around 700 new nuclear plants,’ he explains.
Oil is not the answer either. Sooner or later, oil, formed over thousands of years by algae and bacteria, will run out. What’s more, oil is not simply a question of producing energy. It is largely a political question – a fact that has caused many oil-dependent nations to seek out alternative sources of energy.
In Korppi-Tommola’s opinion the answer is in wind and solar energy and in the new approaches of non-thermal and thermal biomass use, heat pumps and energy savings. Renewable energy is a topic on everybody’s lips. The last time people talked about it much was during the oil crisis of the 1970s. This time the debate has been sparked off not only by politics but by a number of other factors, notably climate change and the business opportunities associated with sources of renewable energy.
One company actively making the best of these business opportunities is Moventas, a company whose head office is in Jyväskylä. Moventas employs over 1,000 people in eight different countries. It is one of the leading renewable energy companies in the world, and works primarily in the field of wind power. ‘It all started when wind power really started to take off on the world market, spurred on by a number of drivers on the macro level, such as the desire to reduce carbon emissions,’ explains Jyrki Virtanen, who is responsible for Moventas’ sales and marketing.
In the last few years Moventas has grown rapidly, although the economic downturn has had an effect on their profits, in the long run the business is a stable one and more growth is predicted. The largest expanding markets are currently in China and the United States. In China, the need for energy is growing very fast indeed and soon the country will be dependent on oil for 70% of its energy requirements. However, most oil comes from politically volatile parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela. One reason why the demand for wind power has grown so much in China is the desire to be energy independent from other countries.
‘A few years ago the demand for wind power in China began to rocket,’ says Virtanen. In the last two years, two Chinese companies have entered the world’s top ten manufacturers of wind turbines. One of them we’d never even heard of before that.’ Although they also produce a lot of carbon emissions, the United States is also a pioneer of renewable energy. As a student in the 1980s, Virtanen was involved in erecting the first wind turbines in the windy plains of California.
In Finland it is Jyväskylä, the capital of Central Finland that is the pioneer when it comes to seeking out alternative sources of renewable energy. Around half of the region’s energy consumption comes from biofuels. In the European Union as a whole, biofuels account for only 6% of total energy consumption and in the whole of Finland it is just over 20%. The regional council of Central Finland has set itself the goal of becoming entirely independent of fossil fuels by 2015, with the exception of petrol used in cars. Making this possible are the forests and peat bogs of Central Finland. A number of important renewable energy and forestry companies have settled in the area, including Vapo, Ariterm, Metsä-Botnia and UPM.
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