Renewable energy fuels the majority of our mills

Energy is a key resource in the forest industry, especially in the production of forest based products. Metsä Group’s energy production is largely based on renewable fuels, ensuring low emissions of fossil carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Fossil free energy constitutes 88% of the energy used in Metsä Group’s production. The share of bio-based fuels is 90%. The used renewable bio-based fuels mainly consisted of wood-based production side streams as well as harvesting residues. Stem wood is not used for energy generation.

Nationally, we are a major producer of renewable energy: Metsä Group produces about 15% of the renewable energy in Finland. In 2023, we produced a total of 17.3 TWh of renewable electricity and heat. We produce renewable energy from logging residue, such as branches and treetops, sawdust and bark from sawmills, as well as production side streams.

The electricity self-sufficiency rate of our pulp mills is 176%, and they are among the largest producers of renewable energy in Finland. The excess energy from both electricity and heat production is supplied to the companies at our integrate mill sites, to district heating networks of the local communities and to the national electricity grid.

Investments in renewable energy

We have made long-term investments in the production and utilisation of renewable energy and improved our performance significantly, but we still have work to do. To achieve our strategic objective of having fossil free mills by 2030, we will put our focus into three main development areas:

Some of the significant investments in bioenergy, which have further increased the share of bioenergy in our operations, are Äänekoski bioproduct mill, Husum mill’s recovery boiler investment and ending the use of burning peat in multiple mills.

A major supplier of energy to replace fossil fuels

In addition to its own energy production, Metsä Group is one of the largest suppliers of wood-based biomass in Finland. We enable customers to replace fossil fuels, with customers all around the country. The surplus of wood-based fuels from mill processes and forestry, such as bark and branches, are sold to external partners. Metsä Group supplies the equivalent of 3 TWh of biomass for bioenergy production that can replace up to 0.8 million tonnes of fossil carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Focus on energy efficiency

As well as increasing the share of renewable energy, we are focusing on energy efficiency. We monitor the development in our mills’ energy efficiency with an energy efficiency index. It is calculated as a ratio between all the electricity, heat and fuel used by production to the volume of production. In 2023, the index was  102. Our target is to have an index of 90 in 2030. Improving energy efficiency is an important element in all of our major production investments.