The Climate Leadership Coalition’s annual spring meeting was held on April 1, 2022. The meeting addressed the key achievements during the first eight years by the former CEO Jouni Keronen and plans for the future introduced by the new CEO Tuuli Kaskinen.
During the official part of the spring meeting, it was noted that since the spring meeting of 2021 CLC has accepted six new organisational members and six new personal members.
In the eight years since its inception, CLC network has grown from seven to 89 organizational members. Members including companies, universities, trade organizations, cities and research institutions employing 530,000 people globally and represent also about 70 percent of the market cap on OMX Nasdaq Helsinki. CLC also has 55 personal members including members of the CLC advisory board. The advisory board has a unique competence in relevant climate change mitigation policies and innovations.
Several former and current key members from the CLC Board or Advisory Board presented their views on CLC’s history, achievements and future in the meeting.
“Climate Leadership Coalition has grown to be the Europe’s largest and one of the most dominant non-profit climate-business networks in Europe. We hope that CLC has had an impact inspiring EU to implement ambitious goals and effective climate policies,” summarized Marcus Wallenberg, Member of the CLC Advisory Board.
”When we founded the coalition with seven founding members in 2014, no-one had any idea of how popular it would become or what significant results we would achieve. In our start-up phase we focused on how improve Finland as an investment environment for climate solution and we made proposal for example for the Helsinki region on how to reduce the fossil energy. It has been a pleasure to notice that many of them have proceeded well, although when we made the proposal, some viewed them too progressive”, said Antti Herlin, co-founder of CLC.
“After we saw that there will be wider interest for CLC, we developed a scalable model based on theme areas in which leaders and experts from our members can join. Theme groups are the cornerstone of our activities and today the theme groups have engaged over 500 persons from our members. The groups provide members with opportunities to network, create ideas and new initiatives, learn from each other and hear about the latest research, methods and international developments”, said Pertti Korhonen, the first Chair of the CLC board.
”In 2018, we had grown to an organization with more than 50 members. We asked ourselves a question; what is the “soul¨ of CLC and do we all share key beliefs with regard to the main causes and mechanisms leading to climate change and the necessity to react to this negative phenomenon. In the fall 2019 CLC published a Position paper which outlined the reasons to climate change and promoted systemic, market-driven solutions. We suggested many economically feasible solutions backed up by an effective carbon pricing. The Position Paper was underwritten by our members, and it became a baseline of our policy work. This Position also formed the groundwork for the Call on Carbon campaign, led by CLC, Haga Initiative from Sweden and Skift Business Climate Leaders from Norway. The campaign is currently the largest one in its kind globally”, said Henrik Ehrnrooth, the second Chair of the CLC board and the current Chair of the CLC Advisory Board.
”In the coming years, our aim is grow in the Nordic area and offer our members more opportunities for networking and strengthen our policy work in Nordic countries, EU and globally,” said Karl-Henrik Sundström, the current Chair of the CLC board.
”CLC has had an impact to Finnish and European climate policies. One example is a proposal called ‘carbon budget’ for the net-emissions that CLC with its Nordic partners promoted in 2019-2020. As a result, the concept is now included into EU Climate Law. I am pleased that CLC has been able to develop a productive and open collaboration and communication model with decision makers,” said Jyrki Katainen, current Vice-Chair of the CLC board.
“CLC is an impactful player which shows the way in effective climate crises management. The agenda of CLC will focus also in the future on carbon pricing, carbon handprint and carbon sinks. In current geopolitical situation the major challenge is to increase European energy security and getting rid of fossil fuels at the same time. That’s a current topic for CLC as well. I look forward the collaboration with old and new members of CLC to create forward looking proposals on these topics. And I wish to give my heartfelt thanks to Jouni Keronen, my predecessor as CLC’s CEO. He has created Europe’s largest climate-business network that has strong roots in Finland and Nordic countries and big handprint globally”, said Tuuli Kaskinen, CLC’s new CEO.
All speakers thanked Jouni Keronen for his pioneering work.
“It has been a great honour to lead CLC from the beginning and see how the interest for climate issues has developed from “side-lines” to main stream. With our impressive network and excellent collaboration we have created a value for our members and scalable international concepts to mitigate the climate change. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the whole CLC network, our partners and the team. I wish a good luck and success to Tuuli! I am also grateful that I can continue as co-chair of the CLC Advisory Board and as a part time advisor focusing into our global initiatives like Call on Carbon and Carbon handprint,” said Jouni Keronen, CLC’s Executive Director and CEO 2014-2022.
More information: Tuuli Kaskinen, CEO, Climate Leadership Coalition, tuuli.kaskinen@clc.fi, +358 50 5149752, Jouni Keronen, Co-Chair, Climate Leadership Coalition Advisory Board, jouni.keronen@clc.fi, +358 50 4534881 and Kari Mokko, Development Director, Climate Leadership Coalition, kari.mokko@clc.fi, +358 40 7513281
Tuuli Kaskinen started as CLC’s CEO in April 1, 2022. Jyrki Katainen, CLC’s Vice-Chairman and Antti Herlin, who summoned the meeting that led to the foundation of CLC, presented their views on CLC’s achievements and future at CLC’s annual spring meeting.
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