Pohjolan Voima

Pohjolan Voima was established in 1943. The Company’s founders needed electricity for their operations, but none of the shareholders could alone cover the extensive costs involved in the construction of power plants: a decision was taken to centralize the production of energy and to share the costs. In the beginning, Pohjolan Voima built hydropower plants.

In the 1960s, as the electricity demand was increasing and the opportunities for further construction of hydropower were dwindling, the Company undertook to build thermal power plants as well. The first thermal power plants were fuelled by oil. When the oil crises increased the price of fuel manifold, Pohjolan Voima built coal-fired power plants and was among the founders of the nuclear power company, Teollisuuden Voima Oy.

 In the 1990s, Länsirannikon Voima Oy and Etelä-Suomen Voima Oy merged with Pohjolan Voima, which also purchased Oy Nokia Ab’s energy business. At the turn of the millennium, Pohjolan Voima launched jointly with its shareholders an extensive construction programme of biofuel-fired power plants and contributed to Teollisuuden Voima’s nuclear power project.

Pohjolan Voima’s founder shareholders were Finnish forest industry companies. Later on, municipal energy utilities and companies as well as other industries became owners as well.