Finland

Responses

Adaptation Mitigation

Sectors

Agriculture Buildings Economy-wide Transport

Instruments

Governance

Capacity building Institutional mandates MRV Processes, plans and strategies Subnational and citizen participation

Keywords

Adaptation Institutions / Administrative Arrangements Carbon Pricing Energy Demand Transport

Climate Change Act 609/2015

Legislative

Law

Adaptation Framework

Mitigation Framework

Passed in 2015

The Climate Change Act intends to create a bottom up, long-term, consistent and cost-effective climate policy through enabling political decision making and its transparent implementation (Mitigation and Adaptation). To build a low carbon society, the act proposes to reduce Finland's emissions by 80% of the 1990 levels by 2050. The law exempts EU ETS from its remit. It aims to increase the efficiency of the public sector to improve smart 'societal planning' while retaining the competitiveness of the economy in achieving the targets without imposing new obligations on businesses or others. The act includes a planning and monitoring system and measures to clarify the climate policy planning of state authorities.

This Act provides for medium and long term plans. The long term plans include the alternatives for reaching the long term emissions target and needs approval every 10 years, while the medium term plans concern measures outside the emissions trading scheme (traffic, housing, agriculture) and are to be approved once per election term and the respective government is required to report to the parliament on the implementation.
The plan for adaptation stipulates a risk and vulnerability review and to be approved once every 10 years. Further the Act also provides provision for the constitution of a multidisciplinary expert body to support planning of climate policy.

In March 2022, the government introduced a bill to ensure that a carbon neutrality target for 2035 and other international and EU climate objectives will be reached. The new Act was approved by Parliament on May 25th, 2022, and came into force on 1 July 2022.

Documents

Climate targets in this law

2 targets

Achieve carbon neutrality by 2035

Economy-wide | Base year target | Target year: 2035 | Base year:
80% GHG emission reduction by 2050 compared with a 1990 baseline

Economy-wide | Base year target | Target year: 2050 | Base year: 1990

Related litigation cases

Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and Greenpeace v. Finland

Opened in 2022 Filing
Finland's Climate Act (423/2022) was amended to include new provisions on the climate plans of municipalities and on appeals concerning decisions made under the Climate Act. According to section 16 of the Finnish Climate Act, “[t]he Government shall monitor the implementation of the climate polic...