Maria Rautanen questioned the transportation of foreign waste to Finland for energy production. She referred to information from Kaleva, which indicated that nearly 50,000 tons of waste had been brought to Oulu for incineration at Oulu Energy and Syklon facilities since 2021. According to her, waste had even been transported from the outskirts of a landfill in Rome and from the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Rautanen wrote that according to Kaleva, nearly a third of the imports had occurred with figures that had been mistakenly approved by the Finnish Environment Institute. She demanded a transparent investigation into the permit errors. Rautanen criticized the downsizing of Finland's domestic energy production, particularly the reduction of peat use due to taxation and emissions trading costs. According to her, Finnish contractors and energy entrepreneurs had ceased operations, machines had been sold, and expertise in the sector was disappearing as energy was produced by importing waste from thousands of kilometers away. Rautanen called for open life cycle assessments to justify the import of foreign waste, taking into account transport by road and sea, combustion emissions, ash, waste impurities, and domestic fuels replaced by imported waste. She also demanded information about the quality of the waste brought to Finland, its monitoring, and the effects of combustion on flue gases, heavy metals, and fine particles. Rautanen believed that Finland's energy supply should fundamentally rely on domestic raw materials, local labor, and supply security. She found it difficult to accept that waste transported from Rome was used for energy production while the use of domestic peat had been reduced, and she questioned whether this constituted sensible circular economy practices. https://t.co/2CjRydkxAO #ilmasto #energia #kiertotalous (translated)
