Helsinki’s Salmisaari power plant to stop using coal 5 years ahead of schedule

It will officially shut down on 1 April 2024

On 21 December, the Finnish capital announced that its energy company Helen is ready to shut down its Salmisaari coal-fired power plant ahead of schedule. More specifically, it will phase out coal more than 5 years earlier than initially planned, with the plant’s doors officially closing on 1 April 2024.

To further accelerate its transition to carbon-neutral energy production, Helen also revealed that it will close another coal-fired plant ahead of plans. Expanding on this, the company recently shared that the combined heat and energy plant Hanasaari would shut a year earlier than expected, on 1 April 2023.

Carbon-neutral by 2030

In a press release, Mayor of Helsinki Juhana Vartiainen commented on this news, explaining that stopping coal is the most climate-friendly decision that the city can make. Moreover, he said that it will steer the capital towards its ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. CEO of Helen Juha-Pekka Weckström also released a statement on the subject, sharing:

“This year has strongly paved the way for a carbon-neutral future. The decision to end the use of coal in Salmisaari five years earlier than planned means that we will move closer to the decentralised energy system. This work has been done at Helen for years, and when the use of coal also ends in Salmisaari, Helen’s and Finland’s carbon dioxide emissions will be significantly reduced.”

The company expects that the closure of the Salmisaari plant will reduce carbon emission by a whopping 2.4 million tonnes. By shutting down both the Salmisaari and Hanasaari plants, the company believes it will reduce emissions by a total of about 5%.

For the past several years, the energy company has worked on finding new alternatives to coal. In other words, it has been preparing for the transition to decentralised heat production and energy systems for a long time. Thus, it already has plans for future replacement power sources.