Sustainable Innovation across Key Sectors and Societal Challenge 5: Insights from and for Finland

The European Union (EU) targets growth based on smart, sustainable and inclusive economies, which can be promoted through profound changes in the European economic sectors largely spurred by the increasing importance and penetration of ICT throughout the European societies. Opportunities for industrial sectors to renew themselves are largely provided by sustainable innovations. This policy brief looks at the sectoral relevance of the SI initiatives collected in the CASIPEDIA against the challenges of climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. The policy brief discusses how key policy developments at the national level are related to SI and connects the sectoral analysis on SC5 with policy developments at the national level. The Finnish government targets strategic change in a number of fields such as sustainable growth, employment, wellbeing and education. In the strategic programme of the government, sustainable innovation comes best forth in the key objective on ’Bioeconomy and clean solutions’. Based on CASI evidence, Finnish research on and development of energy merits attention in the context of climate action, manufacturing should better consider environmental innovations, and agriculture could benefit from considering raw materials and resource efficiency.