15 bioenergy companies targeted in the greenwashing complaint made in Finland
Press release, October 21, 2024
On Monday October 21, the consumer ombudsman received a complaint about greenwashing in the marketing of 15 bioenergy companies. Behind the complaint is the environmental campaign Ei polteta tulevaisuutta (Let’s not burn the future), which looked into the marketing materials of 17 bioenergy companies operating in Finland.
During the autumn, the campaign has become familiar with how energy companies market their electricity and heating products produced with burning biomass. Campaign coordinator Varpu Sairinen describes the results of the investigation as ”baffling”.
”Misleading marketing materials were found in the marketing channels of every single company. All 17 companies implied in one way or another that woody biomass is an emission-free, carbon-neutral or otherwise environmentally friendly energy source. The claims that emerged in our investigation are misleading in many ways and contradictory with scientific evidence,” says Sairinen.
According to Jaakko Kilpeläinen, the PR specialist of the campaign, the marketing materials were also in contradiction with the guidelines on the use of environmentally oriented claims in marketing, published by Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (KKV).
The guidelines, based on the Consumer Protection Act and the practices of the market court and the consumer ombudsman, give instructions on how companies should appropriately communicate about the environmental effects of a company or a product in their marketing.
”In our opinion, every single one of these 17 companies have managed to act contrary to all KKV’s instructions that an energy company can possibly act against. In addition, we also found claims on which, as far as we know, the consumer ombudsman has not made precise guidelines for, but which clearly give the consumer a false impression of the product’s environmental effects,” says Kilpeläinen.
The energy company from the city of Tampere has advertised biomass-based district heating, among other things, ”carbon neutral”, ”environmentally friendly” and ”the biggest climate act in the Tampere area”.
The advertisements promise e.g. emissions dropping to zero
All the companies on whose marketing the campaign focused on, market their bioenergy products as environmentally friendly in some way. They claim that their electricity and district heating contracts are, among other things, ”ecological” ”responsible”, ”clean” and ”sustainable”. In their slogans, the companies are promising, for example, a ”better future”, ”green growth” or that they are ”nurturing nature”.
Product names often have the word ”green” or the prefix ”eco-” in them, and green forest landscape is common in the advertising images. Hardly any companies justified the use of these images and words anywhere.
”General, unspecified claims like these are very clearly prohibited in the KKV guidelines,” Kilpeläinen says.
Many companies also described their products as ”emission-free” or ”zero-emission” or otherwise implied that no emissions were being generated from burning wood.
”The truth is far from this. Emissions from burning woody biomass are even higher than those of coal. This can be easily checked, for example, in the emission factor tables of the IPCC,” Sairinen points out.
Almost all the companies describe their biomass-based energy solutions as ”carbon neutral”. Most of them do not explain this in any way, but some companies give as an excuse to their claim that the emissions ”sequest back to vegetation elsewhere”.
”In reality, forests are being logged and wood is being burned far too much at the moment, especially as the forests’ carbon sinks have already turned into a source of emissions in Finland. Also the EU Commission has warned that burning wood increases carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels due to the increase in emissions and the weakening of the carbon sinks,” says Sairinen.
On Monday, October 21, the activists of the Ei polteta tulevaisuutta campaign, Extinction Rebellion and Finnish Nature Association also demonstrated in Tampere, where at the same time a bioenergy seminar called Bioenergiapäivä (The Bioenergy Day) was being organized.
Images of the demonstration can be found here.
The companies on the complainment are:
– Alva-yhtiöt Oy
– Fortum Oyj
– Inergia Lämpö Oy
– Kuopion Energia Oy
– Lahti Energia Oy
– Lappeenrannan Energia Oy
– Lempeä Lämpö Oy (ja kattokonserni Suur-Savon Sähkö)
– Neova Oy (+ tytäryhtiönsä Vapo Terra Oy)
– Neve Oy
– Oulun Energia Oy
– Tampereen Energia Oy
– Oy Turku Energia-Åbo Energi Ab
– Vaasan Sähkö Oy
– Vantaan Energia Oy
– Väre Oy
The energy company from the city of Kuopio has advertised it’s biomass-based energy as ”emission-free” and ”the climate act of the year” etc.