Climate-KIC Nordic has announced that it has been chosen by the Swedish Government and the Nordic Council of Ministers to establish and run a Nordic Secretariat for Wood in Construction. The secretariat will be charged with expanding pan-Nordic cooperation to promote the use of wood in the building industry to help the Nordic countries achieve the goals set forward in the Agenda 2030 specifically within sustainable cities and sustainable production and consumption.
The Swedish Government will hold the Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers for 2018. One of their focus areas for the Presidency is to promote sustainable solutions within buildings. With the Wood in Construction initiative, they wish to support this agenda.
The Climate-KIC secretariat will be a pan-Nordic cooperation creating a knowledge sharing platform with the overall objective of increasing Nordic cooperation between, cities, academia and the private sector. It will moreover work to promote the development of the use of wood in construction through innovation, development, digitization, demonstration, new design and exports.
The project will run over three years commencing in January 2018 with a total budget of around DKK 6 million (≈ EUR 800 000). As it ties into many of Climate-KICs current and planned activities, the ambition is to leverage the initial funding with more project-specific funding to grow the secretariat into a platform gathering all Nordic countries’ current activities and initiatives within wood in construction, that can be profiled internationally.
In parallel to the Climate-KIC Nordic led Secretariat for Wood in Construction, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes) has received funding to further develop SUSTAINORDIC – a network for sustainable design, architecture and city development highlighting the most innovative Nordic examples within sustainability.
Facts
About Climate-KIC
Founded in 2010, Climate-KIC is the EU’s main initiative within climate innovation, and one of the world’s largest public-private partnerships with more than 200 partners.
The Nordic countries are consistently near or at the top in comparisons of international innovation and business competitiveness. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Nordic centre provides Climate-KIC’s community with innovative and imaginative solutions to climate change via a dynamic triple helix alliance of Nordic partners from academia, industry and the public sector. Climate-KIC is supported by the EU’s Institution for Innovation and Technology (EIT). The EIT is an autonomous part of the EU established to strengthen the innovative capacities of Europe through support for entrepreneurship and new ideas. The EIT is a part of Horizon 2020 – The EU’s framework for research and development. In 2020 there will be seven Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs): Climate-KIC, EIT Digital, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT Health, EIT Raw Materials, EIT Food and EIT Urban Mobility (2018).
