A just transition from the perspective of Finnish peat entrepreneurs

Abstract

The Paris Climate Change Agreement and the European Union (EU) Green Deal transitional assistance policy use the Just Transition (JT) process to support the business sectors most affected by actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of JT is to ensure social and economic justice in the implementation of climate change mitigation policy. The EU countries that have utilised significant amounts of energy peat, such as Finland and Ireland, will potentially seek JT support for the peat industry. We studied the attitudes of Finnish peat entrepreneurs towards JT by investigating the forms of support they would prefer during the green transition. The data were descriptive, collected by questionnaire, and analysed using Spearman’s correlation coefficients. The results show that the preference of entrepreneurs is for direct financial support. Our analyses also suggest that low education level, high age and negative attitude towards the current energy policy can reduce the ability of entrepreneurs to adapt to the current climate change policy. We propose that support should be targeted especially at older entrepreneurs lacking higher-level education, who could be at high risk of being left out of the JT process.

Keywords

• climate change
• finland
• green transition
• peat extraction
• peat industry
• peatlands