Multala seeks higher compensation for land under power lines
Friday 2nd October 2026 on 11:30 in
Finland
Environment and Climate Minister Sari Multala wants landowners to receive extra compensation when power lines cross their land, Yle reports. She says the change should be prepared quickly as new transmission lines are needed across Finland.
Multala has proposed an additional “acceptability compensation” on top of the standard payment for expropriated land. Landowners have for years complained that the compensation is too low, particularly where connecting lines are built between wind farms and the national grid.
A reform that took effect a year ago set compensation at the market value of the land plus a fixed 25 per cent. Multala says the change was positive but not enough, and that higher payments could make power-line construction more acceptable.
Land Survey of Finland figures show that expropriations for transmission corridors resulted in payments totalling 5.1 million euros last year, involving roughly 2,000 to 3,000 properties. Companies also make payments under agreements when they acquire rights to a corridor without expropriation. Including those agreements, total compensation across Finland amounts to an estimated 10 million to 15 million euros a year.
Land Survey of Finland says the total payments are in line with typical per-hectare prices in voluntary private forest sales. The national average was about 4,500 euros per hectare last year, according to the agency’s director Mauri Asmundela.
Compensation can include the value of the land and its expected future value. In many cases, landowners have already sold the trees before the expropriation process, leaving the land value and expected value as the main components of the payment.
Multala wants the legal work to progress as far as possible before the spring parliamentary election. A recent report by Professor Martti Häkkänen, now open for consultation until 6 November, proposes taking the economic benefits generated by power lines more fully into account when setting compensation.
The Ministry of Justice says a bill is unlikely to reach Parliament before the election and that the decision on whether to proceed will fall to the next government. If work begins next summer, the ministry says a proposal could be submitted to Parliament in 2028.