One

Bank of America celebrated its merger with credit card company MBNA in Manhattan late last year. To enjoy a video from what is presumably their closing event, click on the arrow below.

Before watching the clip, you might want to check out "The ONE Campaign" at one.org, led by U2's frontman Bono and named after the original song. The ONE Campaign is actually a charity effort to fight AIDS, starvation and extreme poverty.



ps. Bono is also involved in the corporate world through a stake in Elevation Partners, a venture capital business. I don't know how that is connected to this, but it just came to mind. In the name of fairness, transparency, and shades of gray.

"Most Sustainable Companies" List

In Davos, a niche consulting firm launched the first annual 100 most sustainable corporations of the world ranking (they call it the "G100.") A copy can be found right here. The list includes two Finnish companies, Kesko and Nokia.

Companies "were evaluated according to how effectively they manage environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities, relative to their industry peers."

Chairman of Shell and Nokia on Climate Change; Traveling to Disappearing Destinations

Jorma Ollila, the chairman of the boards of Shell and Nokia, calls for strict emission controls, reports Helsingin Sanomat today. Ollila supports the EU carbon trading scheme and follows American energy policy closely. Doubling energy efficiency is the way to go, Ollila argues, shunning proposed increases in atomic energy. "Awareness of the threat of global warming was much higher than I expected," Ollila says in reference to the European oil and energy sector. Full Finnish-language article here.

For a wistful moment, check out the Guardian for a travel article called the "10 wonders of the vanishing world." Beautiful article, upsetting content, including the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro, the disappearing snow in Austrian ski resorts and the disappearing Maldives islands. The most interesting bit is towards the end where the editor tackles the question "Should I go before it disappears?" Beyond that, should we start doing something else before they disappear?

The Next Zeppelin?

The Guardian reports that the United States desires a leading role in the fight against climate change. In an article titled "US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors" (pun assuredly intended), the Guardian reports that Washington wants to develop technologies to block sunlight from entering earth's atmosphere. The technologies include giant mirrors in space and reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere.

Perhaps openmindedness is in order; that said, would any of this ever, um, fly? Giant mirrors and "magic" dust?

The US government document can be found here.

Questions: 1) which nation would be developing these technologies or would it be a mutual effort? 2) can we afford not to achieve consensus for years to come: the EU and Japan etc. trying to go the Kyoto way, while Americans would go it alone and continue emitting CO2, business as usual? 3) would Washington want this to be an internationally funded project on the basis that it would benefit everyone, a project whose costs would thereby need to be covered by all? 4) would something like this actually be feasible i.e. does it make sense? 5) how much would it cost? 6) who would produce these technologies: would the proceeds go to an American corporation X or some other interest group?

Scabies on a Viking Line Cruise Boat

Aftonbladet reports of the scabies on Viking Cinderella cruise boat, where twenty crew members have been infected with the small parasite. Scabies spreads readily, causes great discomfort and itching in patients, and requires medical attention. Incubation period for the bug can be several weeks, so it is not possible as yet to determine how widely the parasite has spread.

Viking Line is a listed company whose margins have been shrinking in recent years. Intense competition between the various ferry lines crisscrossing the Baltic has made headlines several times over the past few years.

Not sure, but this begs the question, is scabies spreading because the boats are being improperly cleaned due to cost cutting?

Generally speaking, the trouble is that as margins tighten, cruise lines must cut their costs somehow, and cleaning services are often the first that get cut and squeezed, presumably not least because maintenance isn't revenue-producing and the obvious effects of reducing resources in maintenance do not show in the short term. It's easy to cut something that doesn't add to your bottom line. But as always, sweeping a problem under the rug and pretending it doesn't exist won't work for long.

The maintenance industry illustrates many other potentially problematic issues. Labor rights are relatively weak for part-time janitors, and the work is seen as low prestige. Oftentimes the jobs are held by minorities, creating a complex mix of issues around a low-status job becoming associated with a certain economic or social group or class. Turnover is high, training is seldom thorough, employee commitment to the job tends to be low, and workers may become demoralized due to their status, low pay, and the pressure of having to get the job done in the shortest possible length of time. Major problems that are brewing may be obvious to insiders, but only surface in the media when the symptoms become too obvious to cover up.

The only problem is, this industry is far from insignificant. Keeping places like cruise boats clean is obviously essential for ensuring passenger safety and eradicating health risks, considering the total number of passengers residing in the same quarters month after month. As black and white as it may sound, it seems on some level to be about trade-offs between financial results (for investors who may not use cruise ships anyway) and the conditions provided for the people who actually work and travel on these boats and sleep in the bunks.

I'm just wondering: now that privatization and outsourcing are popular, what will happen if hospitals, schools, nursing homes and daycare centers start outsourcing maintenance services? Will patient, elderly, student or child health be at risk?

Viking Line outsourced its cleaning services to SOL Siivouspalvelut, a local cleaning services provider, several years ago. The only real news available on the internet was a broken link to a SOL press release, but the employees who do the cleaning on Viking Line ferries are employees of SOL -- many of them students, immigrants and (other) part-time workers.

What seems wholly unacceptable is the lack of transparency. According to Helsingin Sanomat, it took the Viking Line ferry company a month to report of the situation.

Scabies isn't life threatening, but it's an extreme annoyance. Whoever catches scabies needs to do a complete floor-to-ceiling clean-up in their primary residence and use a topical agent for several weeks to kill the infection in their body. Garments and all bedding must be washed thoroughly, lest one wants to keep getting reinfected.

In a healthcare setting, nurses protect themselves with disposable clothing from head to toe when working with patients who have scabies. I just wonder what kind of protective equipment the cleaning staff on Viking Cinderella are wearing, and how Viking reimburses its employees for the discomfort and hassle of being infected.

Movie Event; Greenwashing; 'Fool' Efficiency

Yesterday's film event, The Corporation, had a great turnout. Thank you to the over fifty Hankeiters who attended and for the Student Union for supporting the event.

On to concepts. What is greenwashing all about? When companies want to appear as more ecofriendly (and one could also argue CSR oriented) than they really are, then they are "greenwashing." The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as “disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.” The term is considered pejorative.

Some examples of companies allegedly involved in greenwashing include ExxonMobil (or Esso in Finland); the company is the subject of an article in the Guardian earlier this month. ExxonMobil has presented a very critical and conservative view of the role of carbon dioxide emissions in climate change. The company has now admitted it has a PR problem that needs to be dealt with. This, however, is not likely to result in strategic changes.

Other alleged greenwashers are listed in a short article about America's ten worst greenwashers.

Strategic change might, however, just pay off. Where companies are being washed green, perhaps they ought to just change, because the consequence of holding on to the status quo may not be so pretty. This is evident in the fate of one of the world's biggest brands and largest automakers, Ford Motor Co. Number one in the above greenwasher list, Ford is really struggling, having just announced its worst financial results ever: in fiscal 2006, Ford lost an average of $1,925 for every car or truck it sold, a total of 12.7 billion dollars. U.S. consumers have been shunning Ford vehicles, because they have the lowest fuel effiency levels in the market. With oil prices continually rising, the decline in demand is likely to continue. Unless Ford actually changes its strategy and begins to respond to consumer demands for more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is evident that it is placing its brand and financial future at risk.

Bush's State of the Union Address; System Change

Just in time for Davos, president Bush delivered his State of the Union address yesterday (the address is like the annual review of the U.S. of A.)

"Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we've done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years. (Applause.) When we do that we will have cut our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- and that is nearly five times the current target. (Applause.) At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks -- and conserve up to 8.5 billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it's not going to eliminate it. And so as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. (Applause.) And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (Applause.)

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change. (Applause.)"

The main points:

• First ever mention of the words "climate change" in a Bush address
• Push for alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient cars
• Focus on technological discoveries to curb energy use
• What does stepping up domestic production in environmentally sensitive ways mean? Hopefully still no drilling in protected wilderness
• Strategic petroleum reserve: approximately 57-day oil supply for the US; doubling it would mean the U.S. would be holding about a third of a year's oil in emergency storage

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In other news, an article on system change argues that "traditional corporate responsibility approaches focus mainly on corporate level activities. Yet probably eighty percent or more of the unsustainability problem resides at the system level. Many good system change programs have been developed. But most have low implementation rates." More on system change here. The writer of the full report challenges some of the basic CSR tenets and proposes major systemic changes.

(Systems thinking, by the way, is a term often used in futures studies - a field of knowledge that is founded on the idea of foresight and looking into what doesn't as yet exist to create desirable futures.)

Climate Change, Davos, and the World Economic Forum

Every year leaders from "business, politics, academia, the media and civil society" meet in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss a variety of issues under the rubric of the World Economic Forum. This year's annual meeting begins tomorrow.

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization incorporated in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland. According to the Forum website, it is impartial and not-for-profit and tied to no political, partisan or national interests.

This is the first year in the group's 36-year history when climate change forms a substantial part of the five-day event.

The World Economic Forum has also set up a separate group called the Davos Climate Alliance; its website can be found right here.

The Davos meeting coincides with the launch of the US Climate Action Partnership just yesterday; another coalition that mixes business leadership with non-profits to fight the problems of climate change.

Inconvenient Truth Box Office

I hope this next thing I'm going to write about isn't crass, and I do apologize in advance if it is, but maybe it's the business student in me, not sure, that for some reason started wondering about the economics of Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's movie and how it faired.

That movie, of course, would be Inconvenient Truth. Net Impact Hanken organized a showing of this film in the fall.

Perhaps it just feels like #1, one would want to see a movie like that be successful (seriously, if Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous grosses over a $100 million, then Inconvenient Truth should at least come close -- what's good though is that Miss Congeniality starred Sandra Bullock and from what I recall of having read entertainment news recently, she is known in Hollywood as a very generous philantropist. Anyway.)

More importantly, #2, box office success of a climate documentary would be a good guesstimate for how successfully its message got delivered to a wider audience.

So with that being said...

It's just good to know, somehow, that the film did exceptionally well in terms of box office, having grossed approximately $42 million since its late May release in 2006. That is a lot for a documentary, especially one that deals with a relatively technical subject like climate change. Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's success really lay in giving climate change a face -- personalizing a concept and a phenomenon.

If we assume an average ticket price of $10, that would mean over four million viewers actually valued the message enough to commit both time and hard-earned money to see the movie. What's more, there were free public showings so that figure probably understates the actual number of viewers reached.

Looking forward to a lot more stuff like this from the (American) film industry.

Ten U.S. Corporations and 4 NGOs Launch Climate Action Group

Ten American corporations, including firms in the energy and financial services sectors, and four leading non-governmental organizations have launched a new climate action group.

Called the US Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP for short, the group will focus on policy action. In a statement released on Friday, the group argued that "there must be a reasoned and serious debate about the solutions. But debate cannot substitute for action." Effective carbon trading will be in the forefront of the group's agenda.

More information and an interview can be found here on MSNBC's website. In the interview, one commentator makes the point that this movement is about posturing and the political climate in the United States; another says that it reflects the corporations willingness to act without being legislated into action. "The climate is the issue; it's the climate in Washington and the climate outside," a PR specialist notes. "What we have here is business taking initiative." Another argues that the movement will not have any considerable impact on the climate. Either way, as the interviewer notes, the truth will be "in the pudding" - six to twelve months from now.

Barrick likely to begin Pascua Lama gold mine under glacier

Here's an example of news that is extremely important yet doesn't get a lot of mainstream coverage.

Canadian company, Barrick Gold is about to begin digging for gold (and silver) high in the Atacama Mountains between Chile and Argentina underneath glaciers.
To get to the minerals, it would be necessary to break the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip. If the glaciers are destroyed, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will contaminate the 2 rivers running from glaciers (because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process).

The Guardian Unlimited:
The original plans of Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold included "relocating" three huge glaciers - a decision since blocked by Chile's environment authorities.
Farmers and local community members in the Huasco valley below fear that the massive open-pit gold mine, due to come on stream in 2009, will cause water shortages and contaminate their fields. Barrick maintains that the $1.4bn mine will operate in "full compliance with all environmental regulatory requirements". But the history of gold mining in Latin America does little to inspire the local community with confidence.

Dresdner Bank and Gazprombank Form Joint Venture, Launch Carbon Trading

The carbon trading market keeps expanding, as the world keeps warming. (For what it's worth, I have yet to wear a hat this month.)

German bank Dresdner and the Russian Gazprombank (affiliated with Gazprom, one of the world's largest energy groups) announced this week that they have launched a new joint venture for carbon trading. The JV is called Carbon Trade & Finance Sicar and registered in Luxembourg. The project will be primarily led by Dresdner's investment banking arm Dresdner Kleinwort.

According to the press release, the joint venture will "invest in primary projects generating CO2 certificates through the mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol with a view to repackaging these credits for resale to investors on a secondary market basis."

Los Angeles Times Uncovers Gates Foundation's Unethical Investments; Foundation Starts Adjusting Portfolio

CSRwire reports of contradictions between the mission and investment policies of the gigantic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable foundation that manages a $35 billion endowment (the number excludes Warren Buffett's $31 billion pledge from 2005.)

According to its website, the mission of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to bring innovations in health and learning to the global community.

However, in a scathing investigative report, the LA Times discovered that 41% of the assets of the Gates Foundation were invested in companies whose actions are at odds with the basic objectives of the Foundation. Companies in which the Foundation held stakes included

• Mortgage companies that were accused in lawsuits or by government officials of making it easier for thousands of people to lose their homes, while the Foundation donated money to help victims of predatory lending

• A healthcare firm that has agreed to pay more than $1.5 billion to settle lawsuits accusing it of medical lapses and fraud going back a decade, while one of the Foundation's primary goals is to improve public health

• Chocolate companies said by the U.S. government to be profiting from the slave labor of children, while the Foundation funds educational and healthcare programs in developing nations.

According to an article in South African newspaper Mail&Guardian, there were additional issues related to oil drilling and drug sales in Africa, which is one of the Gates Foundation's major aid targets. Bill Gates has expressly stated that one of his main philantropic goals is reducing the prevalence of HIV in Africa. Mail&Guardian reports that the "foundation is funding studies into a microbicide which could help protect women and their future children from HIV. But the foundation invests in pharmaceutical companies which have lobbied hard to prevent affordable copies of their Aids drugs being manufactured by generics companies in India."

The Gates Foundation also holds large stakes in energy firms BP and Royal Dutch Shell that , according to the M&G article, "jointly own the Sapref refinery, outside [the second largest South African city of] Durban, which is blamed for 24 significant spills, pipeline ruptures and explosions since 1998. With the Mondi paper mill (owned by Anglo American, in which the foundation has a $39-million investment), it is held responsible for significant air pollution by toxic fumes. Two studies have found high levels of breathing problems and asthma in local children, largely attributed to sulphur dioxide and other pollutants."

The response from Bill and Melinda Gates was swift and promising; although the Foundation does not acknowledge a link to the LA Times report, Bill and Melinda Gates are said to have begun overseeing a complete review of the Foundation's investment policy.

This brings up an interesting issue and challenge in philantropic foundations in general.

Until now, M&G writes, "the [Gates] foundation's financing and philanthropic arms have been totally separate. Its policy has been simply to raise as much money as possible for its scientifically focused philanthropic works, with an emphasis on finding vaccines and other medical breakthroughs that could substantially improve the health of the world's poorest people."

This approach is probably much more common than we realize, simply because socially responsible investment (SRI) strategies are less common than mainstream management strategies that do not account for CSR issues.

The short-term gains of such an investment policy are obvious, if SRI does not rival the existing investment strategy. Yet over the long haul, investing in irresponsible corporations to get profits with which to help the victims of those irresponsible acts seems analogous to turning up the heat in your apartment while keeping the windows open.

One can empathize with the portfolio managers who have to make these decisions. Circumventing CSR landmines while trying to beat the market and maintain a robust investment portfolio is probably more challenging than many of us can appreciate, especially when we are talking about an enormous fund whose size is going to double. Many of the world's largest and most profitable listed companies, where a "regular" investment manager would channel her or his funds, aren't exactly free from CSR issues. The problem seems endemic, and when push comes to shove, this begs the question, where does a portfolio manager draw the line?

How do you keep a foundation well financed so it can keep giving, while not supporting firms that act irresponsibly?

It remains to be seen how the Gates Foundation does this; they are certainly being closely monitored, as per last week.

EK tukee USA:n ilmastopolitiikkaa

Elinkeinoelämän Keskusliiton (EK:n) tuore lausunto ilmastonmuutoksesta on vähintäänkin huolestuttavaa luettavaa. EK korostaa oikeudenmukaista ja kannustavaa ilmastopolitiikkaa, haluten nostaa teknologian ja innovaatiot ilmastonmuutoksen vastaisen taistelun kulmakiviksi. Samaan aikaan EK vaatii että kaikki maailman maat osallistuvat torjuntaan, ja että EU ehdottomasti ei saisi olla edelläkävijä tiukemmassa ilmastokurissa.

Sinänsä hyviä ajatuksia, mutta huono yhtälö: Teknologia ja innovaatiot ovat ilmastopolitiikan kulmakiviä, ja toisaalta kaikkien maiden pitää osallistua jotta yksikään osallistuisi = Kuinka kehittyvät markkinat ja köyhät kehitysmaat saavat käyttöönsä äärimmäisen kallista länsimaista ilmastoteknologiaa (onko sellaista edes vielä olemassa)?!

EU julkisti viime viikolla ilmastostrategiansa, jossa EU selvästi ottaa edelläkävijän roolin ja pyrkii laskemaan kasvihuonepäästöjä 20% vuoteen 2020 mennessä (1990-tasosta). Mikäli muu maailma sitoutuu vastaavaan, EU tavoittelisi jopa 30% vähennystä.

Kauppalehden lauantai-numero totesikin seuraavaa:
"Elinkeinoelämän Keskusliiton ilmastopoliittisen linjauksen tulkittiin olevan tuki USA:n ja Tyynenmeren maiden ilmastoaloitteelle, joka luottaa teknologiseen kehitykseen kasvihuonekaasujen torjunnassa. Ilmastoaloitetta on pidetty Yhdysvaltain presidentin vastavetona YK-vetoiselle Kioton sopimukselle. Ylen tv-uutisten haastattelema EK:n johtaja

Leif Fagernäs myönsi, että EK tukee amerikkalaisten teknologiaa painottavaa kasvihuonekaasujen vähennysmallia"

Green Behavior at Home and in the Office

According to a British survey, workers leave their eco-friendly habits at home. Behaviors like switching off lights and the computer and boiling only the needed amount of drinking water were substantially more infrequent at work compared to home.

Employees argued that they looked to their bosses for example and speed and efficiency came before green issues at work. Hence the neglect.

One can think of a number of additional issues besides electricity use that would likely yield the same result. Copiers are a common source of waste; my personal experience has been that the busier the office, the more paper and copy services are overused, beyond what is necessary.

In certain businesses, we are talking about issues like corporate travel; document transportation; and so on. The further up the chain we go, the larger the issues get.

On the other hand, in organizations like hospitals or food services companies, the issues may be slightly different and probably even greater. It would be interesting to know whether there is a difference between state vs. privately owned organizations.

Improvements could take place in a number of areas, such as commitment to sorting waste at the site; food procurement vs. actual consumption levels and recycling of biodegradables; commitment to recycling packaging materials (such as drink cartons); safe and appropriate use of cleaning agents; use of non-reusable vs. reusable cutlery and crockery; and the like.

But the point is, should CSR, as most other good things in the world, begin at the corporate "home", inside the firm? How does the level of CSR credibility of a business change over time, if the firm applies responsible behaviors intra firm -- or not?

Net Impact in Today's FT

"A wave of interest in courses and electives that cover everything from human rights to climate change has swept business school campuses. Their interest is reflected in the rapidly growing membership of Net Impact, a network of MBA students and young professionals that promotes the use of business strategies to affect society, ethics and the environment. The organisation now has more than 130 chapters on four continents in 75 cities and 80 graduate schools."

("A degree of ethical leadership" by Sarah Murray)

"Ilmastonmuutos iskee vakuutusyhtiöihin" (KL 12.1.07)

Kauppalehti otsikoi etusivullaan että myös suomalaiset vakuutusyhtiöt ovat entistä kiinnostuneempia ilmastonmuutoksesta ja sen vaikutuksista vakuutettavaan omaisuuteen, erityisesti maa-alueisiin ja kiinteistöihin. "Yhä useammat rannat Suomessa ja Ruotsissa kaavoitetaan täyteen asuntoja kun ilmastonmuutos nostaa järvien, jokien ja meren pintaa ja tulvista alkaa tulla jokavuotisia," Kauppalehti kirjoittaa.

How to Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic

Here's an excellent link to "How to talk to a climate change skeptic." Check it out; the page refutes any and all arguments against human-induced climate change. Even if you're not having a dialogue with a skeptic, the page is interesting in its own right: if you have questions about a specific issue related to global warming, the site can probably answer it for you and provide great graphics and stats to boot.

Corporate Sustainability Course at Hanken

A new course in Corporate Sustainability starts next week at Hanken. It's so popular that the instructor is urging people to sign up quickly, because only 50 students are accepted into the class.

The class will have a large media criticism / analysis component, including three film events. Among the films that will be shown: The Corporation (2003.) You can find the trailer below and the film's homepage here.

ps. For longer sneak previews, you can find several segments of The Corporation on YouTube. Just click on this link. Dubbed in Spanish, though!

Here is director Mark Achbar's interview.

Ecological Footprint; Aviation Industry; Finland and Climate Change

Ecological footprint = a calculation that estimates the area of Earth's productive land and water required to supply the resources that an individual or group demands, as well as to absorb the wastes that the individual or group produces.

Check www.myfootprint.org for your ecological footprint. (For what it's worth, I took this test and thought I live a fairly simple life, but apparently my footprint is 4.4; and if everyone lived this way, we would need 2.4 planets! Makes you go, Hmm...)

Aviation appears to be the big culprit in the footprint equation. On that front, in Britain just this week, a new storm of a debate has erupted over the issue of restricting aviation to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Prime minister Tony Blair is taking heat for his comments on the "impracticality" of measures aiming to restrict air travel; an antithesis to his previous statements pushing for such restriction and to the Stern Review on climate change which he commissioned last year.

So is it easier to be on the corporate side, where your fate depends not on votes but on net profits? A fair CSR question, perhaps.

On that note, Richard Branson of Virgin, the UK transportation and entertainment conglomerate, agreed last fall to invest $3 billion in a new venture devoted to solving the climate crisis. Perhaps Branson sees this as a moral obligation, considering a major part of his empire is made up of Virgin Airlines?

According to environmental website Grist.com, Branson "plans to plow 100 percent of the proceeds from Virgin's airline and locomotive divisions -- an estimated $3 billion over 10 years -- into investments in clean technologies, such as wind turbines and cleaner-burning aviation fuel, with a heavy emphasis on developing "cellulosic" ethanol."

The first new offshoot in Branson's business empire is called Virgin Fuels, which will invest $400 million over the next three years in the renewable fuels sector, beginning with an ethanol venture called Cilion.

Here in Finland, likewise, Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto, EK, or The Conferedation of Finnish Industries, published a press release on 9.1.2007 and said that Finland should aim to be a major player in the fight against global climate change. According to EK, we must amend our consumption patterns and develop and apply new technologies. More global technology investment into combatting climate change; global norms and regulations; effective emissions trade; and efficient production processes are key. Energy and climate related technologies could be a major area of innovation for Finland.