Comment by filleokus
18 hours ago
This must at least partly be region-dependent right?
In the darker northern parts of Europe, the German transition to renewable haven't really been a cost-saving success story (right?).
From my (very) casual Swedish vantage point, the wind build out here was a very government subsided race to zero marginal prices that barely helped anything?
Most of Finnish wind capacity was built without subsidies. The demand was saturated at ~25% of total generation, after which the market started building solar. Wind power is more cost-effective at these latitudes, but solar generation is currently more valuable, as it correlates less with existing renewables.
That only makes sense if you're burning hydrocarbons to heat your homes; about 1/3 of total energy use is space heating. Shifting to heat pumps and more wind before wasting money on solar panels at high latitudes is better ROI on energy independence and carbon reduction.
Heat pumps already became popular a long time ago. Electricity is so widely used for heating, that the difference in electricity consumption between the coldest winter days and July nights is almost 2.5x. While there are some old legends of Finnish (or maybe Sami) wind wizards, we still haven't figured out how to generate wind power on demand.
In any case, it's up to the market. If you believe it's possible to make money with wind / solar / nuclear power in Finland, you should be able to get permits in a reasonable time. Right now, those building solar are investing more than the others.