Green Net Finland presented BALTIC CLEANTECH ALLIANCE on St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum. The session Green Net Finland gave presentation in was organized in collaboration with Non-commercial partnership “City Homeowners Association” (St.Petersburg), Saint-Petersburg cleantech Cluster for urban environment and BALTIC CLEANTECH ALLIANCE: Finnish Water Forum, Green Net Finland and Cleantech Latvia.
In the session the importance of holistic approach in developing projects for urban environment was discussed. Norwegian investment company Green Energy One AS – Mr. Ragnar Ottosen – presented an ESCO concept developed particularly for Russian energy efficiency market and some real cases where the model has been utilized.
Also a representative from Stockholm Administration, Mr. Stephan Lorenz spoke about the integrated development of coastal industrial zones. In his presentation he gave an example of creating a closed loop system for housing and communal services with the use of energy saving technologies in the Royal Sea Port quarter.
The representative of St. Petersburg Business Incubator ”Ingria” – Mr. Artur Gurevich – presented a project called “Ecoland” (origin «Эколенд»). Ecoland is about complex development of territories in St.Petersburg and improving of ecological situation.
Mr. Nikolai Pitirimov, the chairman of the board of St. Petersburg cleantech mentioned that St. Petersburg’s and Stockholm’s holistic approach are similar but only the scale is different.
Green Net Finland’s Ms. Evilina Lutfi introduced the concept of BALTIC CLEANTECH ALLIANCE and spoke about the importance of clusters or “triple-helix” collaboration communities in both regional and international level. She mentioned that through clusters entering the new markets can be very resource efficient. The same idea was shared also by Mr. Ragnar Ottosen.
Green Net Finland and St. Petersburg “City Homeowners Association” are going to sign a Memorandum of understanding on supporting the establishment of Russian National Technological Initiative GreenNet. This will be an instrument for scaling the St. Petersburg experiences in cleantech sector’s development by triple-helix or cluster approach further to other regions of Russia. As a strategical focus on this stage of Russian GreenNet will be increasing the ecological safety and resource efficiency in the urban environment. On an operational level, the focus will be on further developing the cleantech implementation in Russia and supporting the process of switching towards green and circular economy. The MoU is planned to be signed at the Russian-Finnish SME Partneriat in Helsinki on 10 October 2017.