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The Minister of Economic Affairs, Mr Jan Vapaavuori, is the official Patron of the Vaasa EnergyWeek 2013

Fossil fuels are still running our globe and without oil and coal the world would simply stop. The earth’s population, people’s consumption and with it the need for energy and raw materials keep growing and this causes serious challenges for the battle against climate change, increases environmental emissions and causes inadequacy of fossil fuels.

It has been estimated that unless the share of nuclear power and the carbon capture and storage technologies grow significantly in the field of energy production by 2050, 80% of the world’s energy at that time will have to be produced by renewable sources of energy. Energy efficiency will also have to be improved considerably. The most important factor driving us in this direction is the ever toughening emissions targets. Clean energy technology and energy efficiency are the fastest growing fields of cleantech and represent the solution to these challenges.

The cleantech business is one of Finland’s economic focus areas in the future. The government has set the target of making Finland one of the world’s leading countries in cleantech know-how. In 2011, the combined turnover of Finnish cleantech companies was over EUR 20 billion, of which export accounted for EUR 12 billion. The turnover grew from the previous year by more than 10%, which is an excellent achievement in the current economic situation, where growth in general is almost non-existent.

Finland aims to raise the turnover of its cleantech business to EUR 50 billion by 2020 and to increase exports in this field to more than EUR 37 billion. This would result in more than 40,000 new jobs in the field. The majority of the growth will be generated by the solutions in clean energy and energy efficiency. Finland is already known as one of the leading countries in the world in clean technology, and its special strengths are clean and efficient technologies within energy production, consumption and distribution.

The Vaasa region plays a key role in our government’s target of making Finland a leading provider of cleantech. Vaasa is already the location for the most important energy technology cluster in the Nordic countries, employing more than 10,000 people. Vaasa’s target is to double this number by 2020, which would make its share of the whole country’s target for jobs in clean technology even more significant. More than 70% of the products and services provided by the regional energy cluster are exported.

I think it is very important that the energy solutions developed in our country also have the opportunity to enter the international market and succeed there. The Finnish home market is small and growth can only be achieved through the growing international market. Growth in exports not only creates new jobs, but also helps to improve our trade balance. Moreover, the development of clean energy technologies will provide solutions for global environmental challenges. In purposefully developing its energy cluster, Vaasa has made the right decision both for the Finnish economy and the state of our global environment.

I’m honoured to act as the patron of the Vaasa EnergyWeek.

Jan Vapaavuori
Minister of Economic Affairs

www.energyweek.fi