THE CO-EVOLUTION OF ENERGY POLICIES AND THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES:
EXPERIENCES IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES FROM THE 1960S TO THE PRESENT DAY
Jari Ojala, Professor, University of Jyväskylä, FIN, +358 14 2601269, jari.ojala@campus.jyu.fi
Esa Ruuskanen, Senior research scholar, University of Jyväskylä, FIN, +358 50 5997085, esa.ruuskanen@jyu.fi
Overview
At its Bali meeting in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that there were several
adaptation options for climate change. Given the availability of energy resources worldwide, the use of renewables should
be fostered by national energy policies, regulations, and fiscal and financial incentives. In addition, the IPCC encourages the
use of local energy resources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass. The subject of our research, biomass
energy, is an alternative that has raised expectations in countries with extensive forest resources. In spite of its CO2
emissions, biomass combustion is generally considered to be greenhouse-gas-neutral because it is part of the contemporary
carbon cycle.
However, there are certain limits to the expanding use of biomass energy. Firstly, forests will play an increasing role in the
global carbon sequestration process. Secondly, the protection of the environment also requires the protection of forests.
Next, we cannot consider energy production that uses the existing forests in isolation from other forest-based industries.
And finally, energy policies are national, and they have to cope with the three Es - energy security, economic development
and environmental protection. That makes the issue vulnerable to political changes, industrial lobbying and discussion
concerning economic growth.
In our paper, we will show that energy policies and energy-intensive manufacturing industries have shaped each other and
thus have co-evolved in space and time. Our focus is on the Nordic countries, where the headquarters of three of the ten
largest forest companies in the world are located: StoraEnso (Finland and Sweden), UPM-Kymmene (Finland) and
Metsäliitto (Finland). In the light of the existing energy policy research, we argue that there is a need to develop coevolutionary models in order to better understand the dynamics of change in energy policies. Although we have two objects
in focus, we understand the concept of co-evolution in a broader sense; multiple phenomena evolve jointly.
Methods
This research focuses on the co-evolution of the manufacturing industries and energy policies in the Nordic countries since
the 1960s through an inductive content analysis of the minutes of the meetings of parliamentary committees and industry
interest groups. As sources, we use both quantitive and qualitative data: minutes of the meetings of parliamentary
committees and industry interest groups, national energy statistics, and approximately 100 recorded interviews with the
power players in energy policy and markets conducted by the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of
Jyväskylä. The analysis focuses on both retrospective and prospective developments. A co-evolutionary model is presented
as a method for analysing how energy policies and the energy-intensive manufacturing industries have shaped each others’
strategies and structures in space and time.
Results
First, the results of a theoretical study of Nordic energy policies and manufacturing industries since the 1960s indicate that
there has been a high interdependence between energy policies and energy-intensive industries.
Second, the Nordic manufacturing industry has influenced policy-making and policies relating to forest resources.
Furthermore, the Nordic manufacturing industry has influenced the policies relating to forest-based energy, peat utilisation,
nuclear power, grid operators and the importation of electric power.
Third, in the future the Nordic manufacturing industries will be dictated by three energy-related factors: national energy
policies, emission trading schemes, and the integration of electricity markets in the EU.
Conclusions
Two types of conclusions emerge for further discussion. First, we found support for the argument that the interest groups
related to the Nordic manufacturing industries have had, and still have, a strong influence on national policies for energy
production and consumption. Second, our inductive content analysis shows that policy-makers are aware of the strong ties
between issues related to national competitiveness and energy policies. We suggest further discussion about the desirability
of the contemporary status quo of the national policies on energy and competitiveness in global markets with regard to
climate change.
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