Danish Cleantech Merger Creates Green Jobs

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

logo-clean-largeTwo leading Danish cleantech organizations, Lean Energy Cluster and Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster, have merged forming CLEAN, a focal point in the development of new cleantech solutions in Denmark. With 180 members including local and foreign industries, universities and public authorities and a project portfolio of $100M USD, CLEAN offers R&D, business planning and investments to SMEs allowing them to develop their products, grow as a business and hire staff. And with a shortage of cleantech professionals in Denmark, the country welcomes foreign talent to join the growing number of green jobs.

preben birr pedersen
Preben Birr-Pedersen

“We are actively in dialogue with our members to help them develop ideas that they could not develop on their own. A startup company can turn into an export company through the CLEAN network,” describes Preben Birr-Pedersen, CEO of CLEAN. “Banke Accessory Drives, a spinoff from Danfoss, was one of our startups. They make electrical systems for refuse trucks, which means these trucks operate virtually silently potentially allowing refuse collection to take place at all hours. There are clear economic benefits to this,” Birr-Pedersen explains. “Banke had the traditional trouble getting funding initially. When they mentioned they had a partnership with CLEAN, funded by the regional development fund from the EU, they were able to develop their product and are now exporting throughout Europe.”

As well as business support, CLEAN forms new, unexpected partnerships, leading to green innovations. “As in the Banke case, we partnered with university research and municipal testing to create a consortium to put different kinds of people together. The radical innovation comes when you put an expert with a non-expert. A business man and an academic equals a new business opportunity and creates growth,” Birr-Pedersen continues. “Regarding talent attraction, we ask our member companies what kind of talent they need for their future growth. We talk to universities and see what kind of talent they can deliver. Sometimes we cannot produce enough talent from universities so we help companies attract qualified people and qualified students from abroad. Instead of one company trying to attract foreign talent to Denmark we work to attract an entire talent pool.”

There are currently 110,000 people employed in Denmark’s Cleantech industry and studies show that by 2020 Denmark will lack more than 13,000 engineers.

Learn more about CLEAN here: http://www.cleancluster.com

To learn more about Green Jobs in Denmark, visit: http://cleantech.talentattractiondenmark.com

*This article was kindly sponsored by CLEAN.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Guest Contributor

We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people, organizations, agencies, and companies.

Guest Contributor has 4374 posts and counting. See all posts by Guest Contributor