Pirkanmaa region (FI) met for its 2nd stakeholder meeting!
The meeting was attended by our permanent stakeholder group, consisting of representatives from
- the Council of Tampere Region,
- several energy companies (Tampereen Energia, Leppäkoski, Lempäälän Energia and Elenia),
- the University of Tampere,
- VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland,
- the Finnish Real Estate Federation and
- Kartanon isännöintipalvelut Oy.
the stakeholder group is expected to expand by a couple of further representatives in the future, f. ex. the ministry of employment and the economy of Finland, which published a report on energy communities in spring 2023.
The meeting was arranged on the 21st of August 2023 and hosted at the Pellava Conference Center managed by the Council of Tampere Region.
The 2-hour meeting was arranged to gather our stakeholders to carry out the finishing touches for a SWOT analysis of Pirkanmaa from the viewpoint of renewable energy communities. The analysis focused on four key aspects:
- technical,
- regulatory,
- economic,
- and social.
These aspects are vital in planning out future focus areas around the theme of our project aiming to further the creation, activities, networking, and communication of renewable energy communities around the region.
Energy communities are a viable solution to promote green energy transition, and still have a lot of untapped potential in Finland. Based on the analysis, the greatest barriers and threats can be found in the regulatory aspects, with problems such as fragmented legislation and control under several ministries, lack of a designated technical entity to carry out promotion of energy communities, and the possible lack of political will or consensus to make necessary legislative changes in the near future.
The economical aspects also raised a lot of discussion, as f.ex. decentralised renewable energy communities are currently unprofitable in practice under present pricing models. However, future harmonisation of the tariff structure along with regulatory changes can alleviate this problem.
Of course, strengths and opportunities were also recognized. Finland is a forerunner in electrical measuring, network automation, control, data, and smart solutions such as smart metering. Thus, the technical prerequisites for producer-consumers are quite good. Renewable energy and f.ex. energy efficiency services can also be seen as potential business opportunities, now and in the future. Pirkanmaa also has several ongoing projects focusing on energy, and thus there are synergy benefits to be found.
The next meeting of the Pirkanmaa stakeholder group is planned to take place at the end of the year, in late November 2023. The meeting is likely to focus on identifying good practices to be shared and sparred with partners abroad.