Finnish-ing touches

Based on governmental agreements, Finland and China are creating solid ground for long-sighted cooperation in the fields of environment, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

To boost and implement the cooperation efforts, the Finnish Environmental Cluster for China (FECC) was established in 2006 as a tool to help Chinese project owners, provinces and local governments in their efforts to solve current environmental problems by introducing Finnish know-how and technologies.

Supported by the Finnish and Chinese governments, the FECC is a collaboration of over 100 Finnish companies, the most significant universities and research institutes. It is financed by the Finnish governmental funding agencies and by the private sector.

During its first two operational years, the FECC focused on establishing collaborations and partnerships with the Chinese central government agencies, provincial authorities and cities, especially in the eastern coastal regions.

According to Ari Makkonen, executive director, FECC, this ground work has been of importance for a more practical operational stage that started in summer 2008.

"We now know the main needs and attitudes of Chinese environmental actors such as governmental institutions, universities and research centers and are able to deepen business cooperation at company and customer levels," Makkonen says.

Makkonen has a long experience on Asian environmental markets. In his previous career before joining FECC last August, he worked for five years as a resident project manager of the Hanoi water supply program in Vietnam. Moreover, he has been in charge of the environment related business operations of two major Finnish companies, Poyry Group and YIT Corporation, in Southeast Asia, including China, for over 10 years.

FECC maintains offices both in Shanghai, China and in Finland. These operate as a communication and business link between the two countries and the businesses. FECC operates under the Trademark "Cleantech Finland".

In 2008-2009 the focus areas of FECC include waste management, sludge treatment, environmental monitoring and rural wastewater treatment. From mid 2009, the focus will also include energy efficiency and renewable energy.

During this operational year, beginning August, the FECC aims to achieve two to five commercial agreements for Finnish companies in China.

"Starting from the Shanghai region, we are developing generic concepts for the above focus areas that can be adapted and adopted to solve environmental problems elsewhere in China, too," Makkonen explains. "The suitable projects and required technologies will be identified together with Chinese entities and clients and after that we will call upon appropriate Finnish environmental companies interested in these projects to join their forces".

In all, the work includes central and local governmental bilateral talks, technology workshops and business investigation, matchmaking for Chinese and Finnish partners and implementation and tracking services.

For example, during the visit of Paula Lehtomaki, minister of the Environment of Finland, in China at the beginning of November, FECC together with some Chinese partners arranged a series of cooperation seminars on soil remediation, waste management and environmental monitoring in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

The Finnish companies alone are small player in Chinese environmental sector, but the companies - with world class technologies and known for reliability and trustworthiness - joining their forces and working together with Chinese partners or with companies from third countries will have competitive power.

Last but not least, one factor that describes the solid basement of FECC is that Finland has been recognized numerous times by the World Economic Forum as the most environmentally advanced country in the world.

Finland also has an abundance of advanced technology and innovations, which can be put into use when finding solutions to environmental problems facing the globe. In addition to the focus areas of FECC these include, for instance, technologies and know-how for environment-friendly combined heat and power production in which the IEA has ranked Finland the best in the world.

The author is a Finnish freelancer and editor in Chief of an environmental and energy website www.energy-enviro.fi. All the views expressed in this article are his own and he can be reached via lauri.kinnunen@teknotietamys.fi

(China Daily 12/22/2008 page4)