Minister of the Environment Ville Niinistö:

Your Excellency, dear participants to this Seminar,Let me firstly thank His Excellency Ambassador Bruce Oreck for this excellent idea of organizing this Green Cities seminar, which he suggested to me just few months ago. The most smooth arrangements for and active participation to this seminar manifests the warm and direct working relationship of our two countries.

I would also like to report to you on my recent visit to Washington, where I met with major governmental representatives on climate policy issues. I got an impression,  that the Obama administration is really serious with pushing strong climate policies forward, and achieving the emission limit the USA pledged for in the Copenhagen Climate Summit 2009. In spite of the difficulties in moving forward with legislative measures, the government and especially its Environment Protection Agency are carrying out forceful actions to limit greenhouse gases from power and transportation sector.

I have also agreed with my colleague, the US Special Envoy for Climate Change Mr Todd Stern, that we both, the EU and the USA, are aiming at strong and transparent climate commitments for all countries. I am optimistic that together with other key players for the upcoming climate deal in 2015, we will find a way to an ambitious yet flexible solution for all the nations to join in.

Let me now turn to the Finish national climate efforts.

Several policies are in process to lead Finland towards a carbon neutral society. Flagship initiatives include preparing a National Climate Act and drafting a Roadmap for minimum 80 % emission reductions from 1990 by the year 2050.

This long term reduction target of at least 80 % was in fact already elaborated in 2009, when the Finnish Government adopted the Foresight Report on Long-term Climate and Energy Policy. Importantly, the work on the scenarios for this report indicated that the shift to a low-carbon society would require a significant improvement in energy efficiency in all sectors.

The national energy and climate strategy remains as the cornerstone of the Finnish climate and energy policy. The recently (February 2013) updated national energy and climate strategy sets new policies and measures, which improve energy efficiency and enable to level off the growth in final energy consumption.

The Finnish national goals in the EU 20-20-20 package also set requirements on increasing the share of renewable energy sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions Finland is currently on the track to achieve all its 20-20-20 targets.

Let me now turn to energy efficiency,

There are various motivations to improve energy efficiency. For example, the International Energy Agency has noted , that improving energy efficiency is the most efficient emission mitigation measure, globally and within the EU.

Saving energy is both cost-efficient and economically viable. Simultaneously, reducing energy use also reduces emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, improved energy efficiency in buildings, industrial processes and transportation could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third. This entails a huge potential for mitigation of global greenhouse gases

Indeed, energy has always played an important role in Finland. As a result, Finland has already developed many measures to achieve greater energy efficiency and is proud to rank among the top in energy savings and efficiency in many international comparisons.

Never the less, we still have a considerable amount of work to do to ensure that we’re on a sustainable path. Finland's long-term goal is to become a carbon-neutral society. To achieve this, we need even more systematic and profound change on all levels of the society.
Finland aims to be cutting edge in energy efficiency and is on track to achieve its 2020 targets in the building sector in 2017, Finland’s centennial year. A national Energy-Smart Built Environment plan (ERA17) aims to fill the 2020 targets in the sector in advance, by 2017.  The ultimate goal of the plan is that in 2050, Finland will be able to offer the world’s best living and operating environment for people and businesses.

Since 2008 energy certificates have been issued to all new buildings when applying for a building permit.  Since 2012, these energy certificates now also have to be presented when selling or renting a house, including older family houses. Moreover, all public renting or sales announcements have to mention the energy class.

I would like to say a few words about the role of public procurement:

The Government itself wishes to act as a role model and take the lead on green public procurement to build markets that take innovations beyond pilot scale. Therefore, the Finnish Government passed a resolution a couple of years ago that encourages all public actors to adopt sustainable procurement.

Clear targets have been articulated to achieve this goal:
• The central government will switch to green electricity. At least 60% of purchased electricity will be produced from renewable energy sources by 2015.
• All government buildings that are new, under renovation or leased must be energy passive by 2015.
• The need for transport and mobility will be reduced by 10% by 2015.
• Criteria for energy- and ecolabels will be used as comparative principles in the procurement and leasing of products and services.

Systematic changes are not only a necessity but also an immense opportunity. New investments in clean, safe energy and energy savings can be a win-win process. It’ll cut our dependence on fossil fuels and create millions of jobs in the EU alone. Finland has carefully built knowledge and know how on clean technology and the abilities to lead the way in this transformation.  Energy efficiency has traditionally been Finland’s key area of cleantech expertise. 59 % of Finnish cleantech companies work with energy efficiency solutions, and these account for more than a third of total industry turnover. (Combined turnover for cleantech business was EUR 24.6 billion in 2012.)

Dear Participants, let me now turn to the role of the cities:

Municipalities have played an important role in Finland’s climate policies and in efforts to increase energy efficiency.

Over 50 municipalities or joint municipal boards have joined in the municipalities' climate campaign.

For more than ten years, an energy efficiency agreement system has been in place between the municipalities and the state.

32 Finnish cities have joined the Covenant of Mayors system, which involves more than 4,000 local and regional authorities, who commit on a voluntary basis to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable sources of energy in their regions, in order to meet EU targets.

Ten forward-looking municipalities have promised to act as laboratories and reduce greenhouse gas emissions more extensively and rapidly than EU targets and schedules would require. These so called HINKU municipalities have brought businesses, citizens and experts from their municipalities together to create and carry out solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

As the project was launched in 2008, five municipalities were committed to an 80 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the level of 2007 by 2030. Since then, five new municipalities have made the same commitment and five more have joined the project as partner municipalities.

In five years the original five municipalities have been able to reduce their emissions by 12-18 %. Fossil fuels have been replaced by renewables and the use of electricity has been curbed with more efficient domestic appliances, lightning devices and with air source heat pumps.

The investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency have paid off both economically and environmentally. The project has created a win-win situation based on solutions that have economic and social benefits as well as environmental advantages.

Finally, I would like to touch shortly the main topic of this seminar, street lighting:

In the Finnish municipalities there are still a lot of old mercury vapor street lights with bad energy efficiency. Part of these old lights is changed to more energy-efficiency lights annually. Instead of replacing them with high pressure sodium lights the HINKU project has been seeking experiences on LED street lights because of their better energy efficiency and better life cycle costs compared to high pressure sodium lights.

The LED technology is still undergoing a developing process and the municipalities have tested the LED technology in only small part of their street lights.

In order to spread information to other municipalities, the project has launched an open databank to which municipalities can store their experiences on the LED lights and on other climate-friendly measures. The aim is to make a common public procurement on street lighting in the near future in order to decrease the costs and to minimize the GHG emissions of the new lights.

Dear participants,

for HINKU-municipalities and other forerunner towns in Finland, the experiences of other countries on street lighting are most interesting and helpful to make wise long term decisions  to develop a more sustainable infrastructure in Finland. I am therefore very satisfied, that we are able to host such an esteemed group of experts from a leading nation of this technology. I sincerely hope, that you all are able to exchange valuable experiences and lessons learned on this important topic to make the use of this technology the mainstream in our societies.  I also wish, that this seminar will be an example for many similar joint efforts between our countries on the field environment and climate technology.

Thank you.