Accelerating the transition towards sustainable Nordic societies

The Nordic countries have committed themselves to ambitious climate goals towards 2050 in terms of developing energy efficient and low-carbon societies. To achieve these goals, we need extensive green transitions in all areas of the Nordic societies and economies. We need to promote green economic growth, sustainability and competitiveness both in the public and private sector.

The Nordic countries are home to excellent research and consistently rank among the best when it comes to innovation. This makes the region well-positioned to develop innovative solutions and policy advice to meet the opportunities and challenges of reaching the Nordic climate goals.

NordForsk, Nordic Innovation and Nordic Energy Research, the main financiers of cooperative research and innovation in the Nordic countries, have therefore together launched this research and innovation programme. The call received tremendous interest with 113 applications in total.

Due to the wide scope of the call, the reviewers have considered applications covering a very wide range: Solar energy, wind energy, bio-refining, efficient use of resources from food production, mining, low-carbon approaches to metallurgy, integrated and lean production methods, innovative ways to use biomass resources both for materials and societal changes to enable green growth and competitiveness in Nordic countries to name a few. We were unfortunately only able to support a fraction of all these high-quality projects.

The six funded projects are: