• Energy Research

ABSTRACTWe examine the coordination of policy priorities among the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the Council of Baltic Sea States, and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The member states of these groups established these institutions to coordinate their regional cooperation. However, the member states ended up having to coordinate the parallel work of these institutions. This coordination effort influenced their cooperation, creating an institutional coordination dilemma. We analyze how interests, leadership, and identity politics influence this dilemma and how negative, problem-solving, and positive forms of coordination can amend its effects regarding the temporal consistency of policy priorities and their sectoral overlap.

Amidst sustainability challenges and in an increasingly urbanised context, housing design qualities are crucial to promote residents’ wellbeing. Despite the role balconies play in establishing connections with the surrounding environment and enhancing housing qualities, questions around how to design balconies that meet users’ needs remain under-characterised. An online survey and analysis of Finnish residents’ (n = 393) attitudes to and uses of their balconies is presented. This provides improved insights into and understanding of the implications of glazed balcony design on housing qualities and users’ wellbeing. The subjective data are analysed in three steps via summary statistics, content analysis and co-occurrence analysis. Results reveal that balconies are greatly used, and that glazed enclosures of balconies—a specific characteristic in Finland—enhance the balconies’ space functionality throughout the year. However, glazed balconies are perceived to be potentially harmful to overall indoor environmental quality, increasing overheating risk, and reducing daylight and purge ventilation in the living space if not used as designed. This study shows the need for a user-oriented approach to design balconies that enhance housing qualities and users’ wellbeing. Practice relevance Balconies in Finland play an important role in inhabitants’ health and wellbeing. New insights from this study about how inhabitants use their balconies will enable developers, landlords and architects to make more effective decisions about the designs of balconies and dwellings generally: size, location, ventilation and configuration of balconies. Overheating is a significant issue limiting balcony use. Significant differences arise for balconies located on lower or upper floors: those on higher floors are more vulnerable to overheating. Architects should not take for granted that implementing passive strategies will mitigate the risk of overheating. This suggests that landlords/building owners should provide information and guidance to inhabitants on how to use glazing more effectively in both winter and summer.

To reach the 2030 decarbonization targets, EU Member States develop national strategies. We examine the views of key stakeholders in Finland to outline how those responsible for developing, steering and implementing the energy system assess the various solutions. The Finnish choices are of interest owing to the mixture of assets, constraints and path-dependencies shaping them. Our Q methodological analysis uncovers three main views: international competition and smart solutions; active consumers; national competitiveness and local solutions alongside a consensus upon which the implementation of Finland's own 2030 strategy can be built. The key stakeholders in Finland are ready for solutions comprehensively shaping the energy system, which can also influence several vested interests, existing business models and eventually break existing path-dependencies. Keywords: Energy strategy, Decarbonization, Finland, Stakeholder, Q methodology

AbstractThe Nordic countries pursue ambitious energy transition goals through national energy policies and in the framework of Nordic cooperation. We propose that the transition is realistic only if it involves the public, private, and nongovernmental organization sectors as regulators, innovators, and advocates of relevant policies and solutions representing the multitude of interests involved. We examine these interests through Q methodological experiments, where 43 expert stakeholders’ rank‐order statements concerning their preferred policy measures vis‐à‐vis the electric energy system. Factor analysis of these subjectively held views produces three distinct views. The first two enjoy strong inter‐Nordic support. The first view prioritizes market and grid development, and the second view prioritizes electric transport, and solar and wind power. The third, “Finnish” view seeks to enhance security of supply, also via microgrids, and prioritizes biofuels over electric transport. Examining the common ground among the three views, we find that enhanced cooperation requires reinforced stakeholder interaction and policy coordination.

Finland, in line with its Nordic neighbours, has set itself ambitious goals to achieve carbon neutrality. By the late 2010s, the idea of a full-scale energy transition was mainstreamed in Finnish society alongside the expectation of renewable energy being the main production component in the Finnish energy system. In this chapter, we argue that an increased share of renewable energy sources is associated with the trends of electrification, decentralisation and variability. These trends contribute to a move from a production-centric to a consumption-centric energy system and require a focus on how flows of electricity are managed, stored and redistributed and how this affects the interests of the widening field of stakeholders. We focus on stakeholders’ interests as they navigate and respond to the trends associated with a higher share of renewable energy in the system with a special focus on grid development and energy storage. Our analysis highlights that whereas the need for a transition to higher shares of renewable energy is being mainstreamed, the policy development necessary is still in a formative phase and stakeholders struggle to balance and interlink the variety of their interests.

Calls for extending Nordic cooperation in the energy sector consider increased cooperation to be a tool to further support the creation of a smart Nordic energy system and realize the sustainable energy transition. To enhance our understanding of the state of Nordic energy cooperation, this article focuses on renewable electricity policy development in Finland and Sweden against the backdrop of facilitating and accelerating the Nordic energy transition. Building on previous research, the respective policy landscapes in Finland and Sweden will be scrutinized with insights from expert interviews, allowing the highlighting of the role of the actors in shaping the national and international energy transition policy. Ultimately, the article will explore the possibilities to enhance Nordic cooperation and question a possible future institutionalization of Nordic energy cooperation from the perspectives of Finland and Sweden. The aims of the article are twofold. First, to analyze the current policy mixes in Finland and Sweden with a special focus on bottlenecks and development needs and, second, to explore the viewpoints of the stakeholders from these two countries regarding potential and bottlenecks for developing Nordic energy cooperation.

Policy-makers throughout the world face the question of how to accelerate the production of renewable energy. Of the various resources, wind and solar energy are more or less globally available. Hence a key question concerns a suitable mix of policy instruments to accelerate the deployment of wind and solar power. Their large-scale integration into existing energy systems and societies will not only contribute to the megatrend of electrification but also raises questions of socio-technical and institutional nature. In many countries, fossil fuels are protected by subsidies and several further structures within the society involving the vested interests of particular stakeholder groups, lock-ins, and path-dependencies. In some countries, nuclear energy is also protected in a similar manner. We examine such structural constraints and introduce case studies on the EU and countries with different types of policy mixes and national constraints to gain insights on a suitable mix of policy instruments to overcome them.