Unlimited energy in World Economic Forum

An eye-opener, unique and collaborative environment

A week filled with numerous events, amazing panels and discussions on climate, future cities, tech and innovation, global cooperation and many more, sharing insights, and gaining fresh perspectives. Leaders had gathered to tackle the climate crisis, companies worldwide presented transformational state of art technologies and new business models. Frontrunners were learning and innovating together to identify new ways to solve global challenges, such as energy crisis.

Buzzwords of the week: web3, metaverse and impact investing

Overall, regarding future breakthrough technologies, the hot topics hoovered around metaverse, web3 and NFT. It was eye-opening to hear the possibilities not only for future learning or immersing to virtuality but to be able to build a transparent and connected network that will definitely be also one technology enabler in the energy transition. From energy and climate perspective the system level cross-industry solutions were puzzling everyone that I spoke to. It also became clear the war in Ukraine has already speeded up the investments in renewable energy, but the transition is not fast enough. There are still also unanswered questions, like how to manage to scale-up without increasing fossil economy in short term.

Finnish Flow organized a series of events under the theme of Future of Cities

For Kristiina as a change-maker the week in Davos and World Economic Forum was once in a lifetime opportunity that put things at scale. ”I’m glad I was able to represent Finland and share Helen’s impressive work towards the future energy platform enabling sustainable living and moving in the sold-out panel, discussing the future of energy. We had excellent debate - although we talked about scaling up the investments it was also pointed out that innovation, research, education, and technology development are as crucial, and we shouldn’t be too shortsighted. There’s urgent need globally, not just in the Western world.”, she says.

Key take-aways from the forum: incentivize, invest, design systematically and embrace enabling technologies and innovation

1. To make the change we need to understand how people are incentivized for the change, to create the urgency and measure, let the data show the current state and then incentivize for the change.
2. We talk about impact investing, and to measure the impact on sustainability with SDG measures is one tool, but what actually makes an impact globally, is not looking at the short-term cash flows or single SDGs but by supporting the developing countries to catch up with infrastructure to get access to clean energy.
3. Systematic design for future megacities that will be located in currently developing and emerging countries needs to be started. There the new technologies, like web3, will enable us to find the balance between nature and built environment.
4. At system level we need big movements to turn the trajectory from linear to circular and preserve our planet. At smaller scale, there are a lot of potential start-ups solving spot on problems like creating transparent CO2 tracking or creating carbon market, which then need to be aligned at system level.

We took Davos by a storm and made Finland the talk of the town

The energy transition is here, and we cannot choose between innovation and deployment. It is up to us to speed it up, by investments, cross sector collaboration, innovating new solutions and building problem-solving communities and initiatives.

Sari Mannonen, Senior Vice President, Solution Business and Portfolio Management, Helen
Kristiina Siilin, Business Development Manager, New Solutions and Growth Portfolio, Helen

Read Kristiina’s thoughts before Davos