The technology group Wärtsilä, Tieto, St1, Fortum and Demos Helsinki have today introduced their Innovation Community initiative aimed at drastically accelerating the global energy sector’s transition to cleaner, more environmentally sustainable energy generation.
Innovation Community is creating a forum for restructuring the roles and positions of the energy chain players. This will provide an arena in which to study, improve, experiment, validate, and bring to market innovations that challenge current energy system paradigms. The business-driven, action-oriented, and ambitious programme intends to seize and drive new opportunities emerging with the transition towards clean energy production.
“We are launching this initiative in an effort to solve the big energy challenges. By establishing an open innovation environment, our ambition is to deliver global scale solutions. By working together with the community partners, we can achieve more and we can do it faster. Collaboration over competition is our guiding principle,” commented Matti Rautkivi, Director, Sales & Marketing, Wärtsilä Energy Solutions.
The community has been established based on building trust and facilitating the challenging first steps for collaboration between its members. The goals include building a vision and roadmap for accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources, and experimenting and bringing to market promising new initiatives. The programme will also provide a platform for multi-stakeholder collaboration with corporations, startups, universities, NGOs, and the public sector through dialogue, open events, and jointly organized projects.
Matti Rautkivi added: “There is universal understanding that the world needs to limit global warming by a maximum of 1.5 degrees C. If this is to be realised, the energy sector must play a far greater role in abating greenhouse gas emissions. Wärtsilä has established a Smart Energy approach aimed at a 100 percent renewable energy future. This Innovation Community project will build on this commitment.”
The announcement of this initiative was made in Helsinki at the Slush exhibition, the world’s leading startup event.
For more information, please contact:
Eleonor Hedström
Manager, Business Innovation
Wärtsilä Energy Solutions
Tel: +358 40 723 4278
eleonor.hedstrom(at)wartsila.com
Fabien Cadaut
Manager, Marketing & Communications
Wärtsilä Energy Solutions
Tel: + 358 40 756 5959
fabien.cadaut(at)wartsila.com