Worse Than Coal? Summer Reflections on Finnish Peatlands

My name is Milla (they/them), and this summer I have explored the peatlands and peat politics of my home country, Finland, as part of my student internship with RE-PEAT. Read below the highlights of my journey and learn about one of the last countries that still generates energy from peat, an extremely polluting energy source.

Finland is the peatiest country in the world: peatlands cover (or covered, before destruction) one-third of the country’s land area. One can hypothesize a connection between the Finnish word for peat, “suo”, and the country’s name in Finnish, “Suomi”. My childhood memories are filled with the enchanting odor of marsh tea and the creaky sound of the slippery duckboards that intersect the boggy landscape. That is why I was astonished to find how little space peatlands and peat get in the Finnish public conversation relative to other peat-rich European countries, such as Britain and Ireland. 

As a good Earth Science student, I started my peat-adventure by getting some hard facts from the sphere of science. It is easy to get lost in the jungle of peatland terminologies; as Annie Proulx notes, “The student of wetland quickly passes from wading in shallow water to the depths of complex nomenclature and liquid meanings, multisyllabic words such as ‘ombrotrophic’ … [and] ‘frost-crack mires’”. This linguistic ambiguity was true for me, as I tried (in vain) to find logical connections between the English terms “fen”, “bog”, “mire” and the Finnish ones  “korpi”, “räme”, “neva” and “letto”. Then, the sea of language to try to describe these ecosystems was made even more complex as I learned about the 380 different kinds of sphagnum moss species. Although the science might be complicated, we should not get distracted from the inevitable need to stop extracting peat.

The Torronsuo National Park features the deepest mire in Finland. Its peat layer extends up to 12.3 meters. Source: the writer.

Finland is one of the last countries to use peat as a fuel - about half of the global peat extraction for fuel happens in Finland. Although burning peat makes up only a small fraction (roughly 5%) of the Finnish energy mix, it is an incredibly emission-intensive energy source. Out of the “conventional” fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), coal is the most inefficient energy source (and thus most polluting). Coal, however, forms from strongly compressed peat in high temperatures and pressures in a timescale of millions of years, gradually increasing its carbon content and energy rank as a fuel – and so peat is even less energy-efficient than coal, leading to ridiculously large greenhouse gas emissions compared to energy generated. About 12% of the total Finnish greenhouse gas emissions come from burning peat as a fuel – in the same range as the emissions of the country’s whole passenger car traffic sector. Not to mention the emissions from draining the peatlands for forestry and agriculture. Scientists emphasize that phasing out peat production is one of the easiest and most efficient climate actions that Finland could take to cut emissions, and it also would yield benefits for biodiversity and national landscape conservation.

The Torronsuo National Park has been restored by filling up ditches with wooden planks. Source: the writer.

Despite the enormous role peatlands play in climate action, one of the most interesting things I found was how many different, even conflicting, views the Finns have about peatlands. There are urban-educated academics and activists pushing for peatland restoration, peat entrepreneurs who are struggling with their disappearing livelihoods, not to mention, far-right populists who defend peat because they say that peat extraction is a “traditional” way of life (peat extraction actually picked up relatively late in Finland, in the 1970s). Then, there are also those everyday berry-pickers, like my mum (who got a bit confused about my info-dumps about the history of Finnish peat extraction but still listened half-interested). Still, many of us might have in-between views, understanding the importance of peatland restoration but still sympathizing with the peat farmers' livelihoods. 

Another interesting thing I learned was how unjust the Finnish energy transition has been for the peat extractors. The industry experienced a total crash at the beginning of the 2020s as heating companies suddenly terminated contracts with peat entrepreneurs. Although it has been known for decades now that peat has to be phased out, the Finnish government wanted to prioritize phasing down coal. Peat, they said, would secure the energy independence of Finland as a local source and its extraction would provide employment and prosperity for rural areas (although the peat industry employs only about 0.1% of the country). Thus, in spring 2021, the peat extractors suddenly found themselves with huge debts from buying peatlands and expensive machinery with no buyers in sight. Although the government gave the entrepreneurs 70 million euros worth of subsidies for transitioning away from the industry, many farmers found that the money was not enough and continued extracting peat to pay their debts. The EU’s Just Transition Fund seemed not to help either, as one of the peat farmers lamented that the money that was meant for just transition was locally decided to be spent on some infrastructure projects that did not even employ the local people.

Sphagnum soaked underwater. Source: the writer.

It is no wonder that peat remains a fairly unknown issue, as each country has their own, complicated terminologies and the amount of perspectives and stakeholders is equally large. It remains difficult to pinpoint who is responsible for the hardships of the Finnish peat extractors that were left struggling alone amidst the energy transition: the policy-makers, the heating companies, the governmental energy company Vapo (known today as Neova) or perhaps the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners?

At the same time, we must be careful not to create externalities from phasing out the fuel peat: many of the Finnish peat farmers have shifted from selling peat for heating companies to selling it for growing medium producers as demand for fuel peat has decreased. I hope that the failure in the just energy transition for the peat producers remains an important lesson for the Finnish climate politics; a controlled phase-out of fossil fuels benefits both the climate and the workers working in polluting industries.

If you would like to get curious and learn more, here are some sources I would recommend:

A link to an interview with Finnish artists that advocate for peatland restoration through creative performances. 

A link to a good, fairly recent, overview of the Finnish peat politics and trade-offs.

An excellent book, unfortunately in Finnish, about the winners and losers of climate policy:

Koskinen, M., Paananen, K., & Pirinen, M. (2023). Likainen työ: Ilmastopolitiikan voittajat ja häviäjät. Like Kustannus, Helsinki.

Author: Milla-Liisa Marttila

article sources:

Prouxl, Annie. (2022). Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis. 4th Estate, HarperCollins. 

Essentials of Geology by Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J.Tarbuck, 11th edition, p. 161. 

Koskinen, M., Paananen, K., & Pirinen, M. (2023). Likainen työ: Ilmastopolitiikan voittajat ja häviäjät. Like Kustannus, Helsinki.