BIOS: Ecological reconstruction

The production of energy is not a value in itself. Rather, energy is needed to promote well-being. As energy production is very resource intensive and causes numerous environmental impacts, the priority is to lower the energy intensity in all sectors and direct the planning and technological development of energy systems so that a maximum amount of well-being is generated by each produced energy unit. At the moment, energy production causes roughly 75 per cent of Finnish climate emissions. Industry uses 45 per cent of energy, heating 25 per cent and transport 17 per cent.

Energy efficiency can be increased by electrifying transport, heating and industry wherever applicable. The energy efficiency of an electric motor can be up to 90 per cent, whereas an average internal combustion engine works with an efficiency of about 20 per cent. Moreover, the energy efficiencies of electricity production and transmission are high. If the electrification of the energy sector, and the efficiency gains through eliminating wasted energy, succeed to the greatest extent possible, the usable energy available to society – that is, exergy – may stay close to current levels even if less energy is produced.

Energy production must shift from fossil sources to non-burning technologies. The most important sources are wind and solar, hydro and nuclear power.

These non-burning energy production technologies have existed for decades. Currently, their development focuses on reducing unit costs, for example, through bigger offshore wind farms. In addition, methods for producing wind power from lighter winds and photovoltaic electricity even during cloudy weather are being investigated.

Completely new forms of energy production, such as fusion power, still need significant work and cannot be expected to mature in the next decade. It is possible to build more nuclear fission power, but the construction of fission plants and development of new types of fission reactors have proven to be slow. Wind and solar power offer the greatest potential, and both are proving to be the most cost effective forms of energy production in many areas.

The main problem in energy production is energy storage. The production of wind and solar power varies according to the weather and seasons. Current nuclear power has limited capacity for rapid adjustments. Hydro power can be used in balancing the production from wind, solar and nuclear, but major new hydro power projects are not possible, at least not in rivers.

On one hand, the transition to low-emission energy production necessitates major investments that inevitably raise energy prices. On the other hand, increased energy efficiency may reduce energy use considerably. By using efficient transport and housing, it is possible to maintain a lower energy bill even if the unit price of energy goes up. In any case, according to the principles of just transition, the increased burden that higher energy prices will have on vulnerable groups must be compensated from the public purse.

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Heating of buildings causes about 25 per cent of Finnish emissions. In the Helsinki area, it is nearly 60 per cent. In small cities and areas of dispersed settlement, it is already cost effective to transition to the use of heat pumps with geothermal, ambient air and lakes and rivers as the sources of heat. Oil heating and direct electric heating must be abandoned quickly. Further, in larger cities, the combination of wind power and heat pumps is an effective and nearly emissionless source of heating.

Unfortunately, current low-emission technologies and heat sources cannot guarantee 100 per cent heating service during prolonged periods of sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures. Therefore, cities with district heating require a combination of heating technologies.

The first step is minimising the need for heating, for instance, through better energy efficiency in buildings and limiting room temperature to that recommended by health professionals. The need for heating can also be minimised by so-called smart energy solutions that anticipate and regulate temperatures according to use. The possibility of lowering temperature in some spacious buildings during sub-zero periods should also be investigated in order to reduce peak loads.

In addition, low-emission heating technologies, such as heat pumps connected to various heat sources, require further development. In the long run, small and modular fission plants may also become available.

BACKGROUND

BIOS (2019). To Continue to Burn Something? Technological, Economic and Political Path Dependencies in District Heating in Helsinki, Finland. Energy Research & Social Science.

Transport produces roughly 20 per cent of all climate emissions. Road transport is responsible for about 75 per cent of these emissions, and private cars produce about 50 per cent of all transport emissions. The most effective ways of cutting emissions are decreasing transport by private cars and electrification. Needless traffic can also be avoided through digital services and remote work.

The least emissions are produced by rail transport. Zoning and city planning can be used to increase the use of rail. Furthermore, attitudes play a significant role. From a health and safety perspective, commuting daily by train, bus and walking makes sense.

Extremely long commutes that are possible only by a private car consume a considerable number of working hours. Thus, commute by private cars does not benefit the society and seldom the driver, either. The drawbacks, however, are obvious.

In cities, a large portion of the land area serves private cars. Freeing this land for more productive use would be beneficial. In areas of dispersed settlement, private cars are often the only option. Development of the transport system should minimise car use in cities and compensate the costs of private cars in areas where there really is no alternative.

Abandoning public transport to the mercy of market competition does not advance or even enable an increase in public transport in areas of dispersed settlement or between smaller cities and population centres. Increasing the role of public transport needs coordinated public support.

The Finnish food system – including food production, processing, transport, marketing and consumption – will inevitably change due to three factors.

First, the environmental impact of the food system must be diminished. Primarily, this has an effect on primary production, where most of the impact is caused, although decreasing food waste and the corresponding problem of ‘unnecessary production’ in Finland is mainly a task for trade and end consumption. Second, production must be made more resilient in the face of environmental changes. As the precise nature of the changes is hard to predict, a flexible orientation is called for. Third, as the global food system is transformed, the changes will be reflected in Finland in various ways. The division of labour in the current system will change and Finland will be unable to rely on the global food system to the extent that is has done thus far.

In reducing the environmental impact, the key elements are a decrease in the portion of animal production, eliminating the role of fossil fuels as much as possible from materials necessary for production (fodder, fertilisers, fuels, pesticides and other agricultural chemicals), decrease in nutrient leakage, revitalisation of soil nutrient circulation, increase in carbon storage in soils and cutting food waste so that unnecessary production can be decreased.

In Finnish agriculture, peatlands cleared only for the purpose of manuring stand out as a considerable yet easily eliminated source of greenhouse gases. This problem can be addressed quickly.

Adaptation to environmental changes relies on measures such as diversifying the repertoire of cultivars, cooperation between producers and the scientific community in identifying new vectors of disease and pests and developing new methods of cultivation.

Diminishing environmental impacts and adapting to environmental changes are not separate tasks: the food system must be developed with both challenges in mind. Adaptation cannot happen through increased energy and resource inputs. Here, the agroecological perspective, which emphasises knowledge of local conditions instead of universal rules, is key.

Agriculture contains examples of the positive synergies highlighted by the IPCC and other organisations: there are measures that simultaneously help in reaching several of the sustainable development goals, such as environmental, economic and social goals. Important research and expertise on these methods exist in Finland, and Finland should forcefully advance the implementation and dissemination of the results.

The transition implies a full overhaul of agricultural subsidies. The current model is based on subsidies for production and must be replaced by a model that is based on environmental considerations, such as results in decreasing environmental impact and increasing resilience and adaptation. Finland has to support this kind of change in the EU’s agricultural policies, as those policies set the overall conditions for national action.

The transition also demands that producers have the capacities and willingness to engage in learning, piloting and cooperation with, for instance, researchers. This, in turn, means that agriculture must provide a decent livelihood for producers. A great social challenge is increasing the economic rewards for producers while directing production towards sustainability. Economically viable local production does not help much if it is still strongly reliant on animal production and monocropping.

The transition in production also entails a transition in consumption: less demand for animal products and increased use of plant products, more varied products and concentrating on seasonally available ones. As the habits of individual consumers change slowly, key roles in the early phase will be played by public purchases of food, pioneering entrepreneurs, availability of new ready-made and processed products and meals and information campaigns. Advancing the use of local sustainable fish stocks deserves a special mention because, currently, the majority of fish consumed in Finland causes proportionally too much environmental damage.

Changes in the global food system also mean that Finland cannot continue to rely on the current global division of labour. Finland is relatively self-sufficient in food (70–75 per cent), but relies heavily on imports of the materials and energy needed for production. The goal is not full self-sufficiency, as international trade has enriching cultural effects and fairer trade can also help development in poorer countries. Some international trade in food is also ecologically rational – but such rationality should not be confused with the kind of efficiency that is determined by labour prices and differences in production costs due to lax environmental regulations. For instance, a lower level of energy use is not a sufficient reason for imports if the energy used is produced with more pollution or if the production, on the whole, causes loss of biodiversity, loss of arable land or water scarcity.

Climate change and other environmental and natural resource problems are damaging the prospects for food production in many areas of the world. Many current export countries will have to concentrate more on feeding their own populations. This will affect how much Finland can rely on imports. The global market will not offer as much surplus food as before. Raising the level of self-sufficiency and more varied national production will have significant effects on regional and local development. Instead of a poorer and emptying countryside, the future may bring regional and local revitalisation, as more varied and economically viable agriculture requires more human labour. Alongside urbanisation, there will be a rejuvenated countryside, which will also lay the foundation for a new relationship between cities and the countryside – including a more equal and respectful cultural encounter between the two.

A sustainable national food system presupposes a sustainable global food system. Therefore, international leadership by Finland is called for, for example, in the institutions of the EU and the UN. Connecting environmental issues with questions of food security and prevention of hunger and poverty are also essential for rich countries, since the stability of food systems in poorer countries directly affects, for example, urbanisation, population growth and migration.

Forests have a decisive role in Finland both regarding the economy and climate change and biodiversity. The overall transition cannot succeed without a successful transition in forest use.

A tolerable compromise must be found between the various economic, social and cultural interests within ecological boundaries. As national policies have for decades had a decisive role in how forests are managed, the guiding principle of ecological reconstruction – a transition coordinated and largely financed by the government – is especially suited to the case of forests.

Given the considerable expertise in Finland, the economic utilisation of forests should be developed towards long-lasting products. Finland has excellent possibilities for forest management and forest industry practices that increase the uptake and storage of carbon much better than the current profile of forest use. Labour intensive tasks in forestry that aim for carbon sequestration and storage, such as reforestation and forest restoration, also offer new job opportunities.

Although forest growth has improved, the levels of annual harvesting cannot be increased. If the decisive role of forests as carbon sinks and storages and loci of biodiversity is undermined, the other sectors of the national economy will have the impossible task of picking up the slack. If the carbon sink of the forests decreases, emission cuts in other sectors must be increased. If the decrease is radical, the other sectors will be unable to cope with the increase.

Current annual harvest levels are close to the (optimistically) estimated maximum replacement level. In terms of biodiversity, the current levels are clearly unsustainable. The 2018 assessment of threatened species estimated that 76 per cent of forest biotopes are threatened and 21 per cent are vulnerable. The unsustainable use of forests is the main reason why Finland has not achieved its goals as a signatory to the Convention of Biodiversity.

As the Finnish Climate Change Panel concluded in a recent study, projections of forest growth and the development of carbon sinks and storage have to be based on the use of more than one scenario, model or modelling tool. All models consistently show that the loss to the carbon sink is greater than the harvested amount. As the role of carbon sinks will grow both nationally and internationally, it is not possible to shrink the sinks without creating inordinate burdens on other sectors of the society.

However, carbon sinks are of major importance in binding emissions. According to the above-mentioned study by the Finnish Climate Change Panel, if the level of harvest was halved to approximately 40 million m3 from the current roughly 80 million m3, during the years 2021–2050, forests would accumulate as much carbon as the rest of the sectors would emit if they maintained current emission levels. However, there is no need to go to this extreme, as the other sectors are capable of quick and significant emission cuts.

The forest industry can be divided roughly in three: the mechanical industry (saw mills), chemical wood industry (pulp, paper, liner, etc.) and bioenergy. Out of these, the chemical sector is by far the biggest, both in terms of the amounts of wood that it uses and the monetary value created. As harvesting levels cannot substantially increase, the portion used by the chemical sector must decrease in favour of the mechanical sector. At the same time, the proportion of longer-lasting products must increase. The economic effect of these changes may very well be positive, especially from the perspective of the forest owner.

Bioenergy use has to be based on the residues from mechanical and chemical industry to be utilised near the place where the residues are formed, so that transport and warehousing do not eat away the benefit gained by replacing fossil fuels with biomass. Refining liquid fuels from wood has very low net energy (the energy in the fuel is only slightly higher than the energy used in its production), which means that liquid wood–based fuels should be used only in cases where electrification is impossible and they are to some extent necessary (heavy working equipment, aeroplanes).

The chemical sector already uses most of the residue arising from its own activities. Most of the energy that the chemical sector utilises is derived from burning the black liquor that results from pulp production. The lignin within black liquor is a main ingredient of biomaterials that are intended to replace plastic. This means that substantial new residues for energy use are not to be expected. The production of new biomaterials may diminish the residues that have no other use than burning for energy. Consequently, large cities have to find alternatives besides biomass burning for their district heating systems, as imported biomass also has its economic, ecological and energetic limits.

Climate change and environmental crises have various effects on human experience, culture and worldviews. Individuals need to re-evaluate their values and habits, and adjust their identities, beliefs and perspectives according to the societal and environmental changes taking place. Communicating emerging experiences, feelings and meanings is crucial even if there is no readily available discourse (such as it exists, e.g., within the natural sciences) for sharing these new sentiments and ideas. Environmental research and discussions describe cultural change as a process where people become aware of the environmental impacts and boundaries of their actions, beliefs and habits and start to seek out and create more sustainable alternatives as future foundations.

One example of cultural change is the increasing phenomenon of climate anxiety. The Youth Barometer published in March 2019 showed that young people are increasingly worried about climate change. In Sitra’s Future Barometer 2019, Finnish citizens portrayed familiarity with the facts of climate change and overconsumption of natural resources and experienced these as the most threatening aspects of the future.

Climate anxiety is being expressed increasingly in public discourse and on social media. A large portion of the population has also taken part in the Sitoumus 2050 (Commitment 2050) project, initiated by the working group for sustainable development at the Prime Minister’s Office. Most of the pledges by individuals concern reducing their carbon footprint.

In popular culture, anxiety and worry over climate change, destruction of the environment, loss of biodiversity and resource scarcity are often channelled into a pessimistic view of the future. In television series and movies, visions of environments destroyed by humans and narratives of survival are becoming increasingly grim.

Simultaneously, the entertainment industry is portraying technological utopias and promises of symbiosis between technological and human evolution. The representations of the future in popular culture are deeply contradictory and display the incommensurability between different routine projections and visions of the future.

Cultural change also includes consumer choices. Plant-based diets are becoming popular and more and more people are trying to avoid air travel. Choices are increasingly influenced by the environmental and climate effects of goods and services as well as by the social sustainability of their production. It is also important to note the connection between consumption and identity, and thus between consumption and the polarisation of identities: many Finns feel, for instance, that private cars and eating meat are inalienable aspects of individual freedom and rights.

The construction of a carbon neutral society demands manifold adaptations and negotiations at many levels. However, these adaptations and negotiations need their space and time. Environmental awareness and anxiety about the future are aspects of cultural change. However, cultural change can also be actively endorsed. The tools include political work, education, communication, art and other cultural work.

The necessity of cultural change can be demonstrated by thinking about the size of the transition. If the goals and foundations of one’s life are based on material consumption, and one is faced with the fact that material consumption needs to decrease by 70–80 per cent, it is clear that this fact sounds depressing, if not impossible. However, the goal is not that after ecological reconstruction one would live like before (with the same goals, values, desires and fears), only with fewer things and choices.

Rather, the goal is to live differently, such that the amount of consumption of material resources does not determine feelings of satisfaction, happiness and meaningfulness. It is possible to live ‘more’, but not in the sense of using more material resources. Creating this different life demands a cultural change, which in its most general sense implies changes in all areas of life.

The importance of this cultural change for facing the environmental crises can be illustrated by the following train of thought. Energy production causes over half of all emissions. Energy is used to satisfy human needs and wants. Only a small fraction of the produced energy goes towards satisfying basic needs. Most of it goes to satisfying consumer societies and their consumerist citizens. Consumerism is not the satisfaction of basic needs but a culturally determined habit and identity, where buying, using and discarding goods has a value in itself. A lower level of energy production causes fewer emissions and facilitates transitioning towards low-emission technologies. Currently, the growth of energy production makes substantial emission cuts practically impossible. Consequently, a crucial tool for cutting emissions is to reduce energy consumption and production. In the dominant technological and economic framework, the task of cutting emissions in the energy sector has been handed to engineers and researchers. They should make the impossible possible: to find a way of producing ever more energy while eliminating emissions. Facing this impasse, it is good to ask, ‘What is energy for?’

If the answer is that more and more energy is needed to uphold cultural ideals of (over)consumption, then the obvious next question is, ‘Is it rational to ask the engineers for help in achieving unsustainable ideals or would it be better to direct attention to cultural change towards ideals of a good life within planetary boundaries?’

Societies, technologies and ways of using energy and natural resources have developed historically, and are fundamentally socially and culturally contingent. Therefore, a change in the fundamental logic of how society operates or how technology is used requires work aimed at renewing cultural beliefs and habits. Culture is often taken for granted as something immutable or as something that changes very slowly. Questioning fundamental cultural values, such as consumerism and economic growth, can feel threatening. However, history shows that culture is not a thing but a process. Prevalent cultural values have, at times, disappeared and been replaced by other values, sometimes even very fast, in a matter of a few years or even months.

In the end, achieving climate goals may be much more effective and flexible through cultural change towards ideals based on sustainable livelihoods than through desperate research and development into engineering solutions for fulfilling ever higher levels of consumption on a finite planet.