One of the first trips I made after arriving in Finland just over two months ago was to Jyväskylä to attend a two day Bio-Energy conference there. Anyone who cares about technology (and of course for me that means technology applied to address energy and environmental problems) knows that two days in Jyväskylä is not nearly enough time to begin to get a sense of all the cutting edge products that are being developed there. The day started with an amazing visit to Moventas, where the team from the U.S. Embassy met with Moventas’ senior management. Partnering with world leaders in wind turbine industry such as Vestas (which has brand new manufacturing facilities in my home state of Colorado) and General Electric (who manufactures wind turbines in Pennsylvania), Moventas engineers and builds what are arguably the finest wind turbine gearing mechanisms in the world. Their plant is as spectacular as is their technology.

From there, we traveled to the home of Markku Anderson, the Mayor of the City of Jyväskylä. I had the pleasure of meeting Markku on my first trip to Jyväskylä (a very funny thing happened at that first meeting – but I will leave that for another entry). His home, a beautifully restored wooden house from the late 1800’s – was filled with wonderful art and furnishings – and the lunch was terrific. Just to prove how much fun we had, check out the photograph below.

The afternoon was filled with terrific presentations from a number of start-up and established businesses all relating to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The view from their conference room was so spectacular that I had a hard time imagining how anyone actually got any work done there.
 
Last stop of the day was at the offices of Keskisuomalainen Oyj, the publisher of so many Finnish newspapers. I was there to learn about their leadership in sustainability. I saw and heard the details about their real commitment to sustainable business practices. I know it isn’t Finnish to brag about oneself, so I will do that on their behalf. I was impressed and inspired.

Once again, the time in Jyväskylä flew by and we had to rush off to catch our train back to Helsinki – I plan to return to Jyväskylä soon.