FasTen

The project Fast, flexible and secure decarbonisation of the Baltic states – possible progress in the next Ten years (FasTen) explores the potential to accelerate the decarbonisation of the Baltic states in the next 5–15 years.

The climate challenge requires fast reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. The FasTen project looks for opportunities not just in the electricity generation but also how emission free electricity could replace fossil fuels in the heating of buildings, in the transport sector, and in the industrial sector. In the Baltic countries, as elsewhere, these cause more emissions than the electricity sector.

Baltic countries are planning to desynchronise from the Russian electricity grid and synchronise to Central European electricity grid by 2025. This change and decarbonisation of the energy sector could have large impacts on energy security. National energy and climate plans include relatively large investments to transmission capacity, wind power, and solar power while phasing out fossil fuel phased capacity.

The increasing role of electricity and variable power generation will also mean that moving electricity between regions and countries will become more important – especially since wind can blow on the other side of the Baltic Sea even if it is still in the Baltic states. Consequently, the project will try to understand the costs and benefits of different options to improve energy security.

Collaboration between research organisations has always been hindered by private data sets as well as closed tools and models. FasTen project will setup an open data set using data sources that allow to do this. The project will also use open-source tools and thus enable efficient collaboration between the project partners as well as provide transparent analysis to support energy policy deliberations.

Riga, Latvia.

Project results

Closed

Full name

Fast, flexible and secure decarbonisation of the Baltic states – possible progress in the next Ten years

Project Manager

Juha Kiviluoma, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland