The programme aims to support the generation of innovations enabling significant leaps in energy and material efficiency and to create foundation for the development of new value networks based on green growth. The vision of the programme is that Finland will have leading expertise and understanding related to sustainable energy and natural resources use. This will provide Finnish companies a competitive advantage in the international market.
The programme targets companies seeking growth or renewal of their business when facing changes in energy and raw material prices and impacts of laws and regulations. The programme will support the generation of innovations especially on boundaries between sectors, as future sustainable economy solutions will not be defined by traditional sectoral divisions. Research organisations play an important role in generating new anticipatory information and skills.
“The vision of the programme is ambitious, but achievable” says Programme Coordinator Dr. Riina Antikainen. “The long history of environmental management in Finland offers a good background for new, significant sustainability innovations. Our industry has been a forerunner in many ground breaking material and energy efficient solutions. In addition, the open working culture and processes in creating policy instruments in Finland are open. This enables efficient networking of different stakeholders, giving a good opportunity to come up with new advanced ideas. The Green Growth programme offers companies, research institutes and other stakeholders such as Ministries and funding organisations a good platform to further improve both national and international cooperation.”
“The Green Growth programme is extremely important initiative for Finnish industry. We need to maintain our competitiveness and growth without sacrificing environmental sustainability – keeping the whole life cycle of products in mind. Spinverse has extensive references with industrial and public sector clients for commercializing new technologies for this purpose and we are glad to extend our work with Tekes”, says Pekka Koponen, CEO of Spinverse.
Spinverse has a long experience in Tekes programme coordination, and, in addition to the Green Growth programme, it currently coordinates also Tekes Green Mining, Functional Materials and Fuel Cell programmes.