KY, Aalto and the EU Green Taxonomy | Meri Löyttyniemi | Negotiator 79

Summary

Meri Löyttyniemi, Aalto University’s special adviser on sustainable development, corrects a widespread misunderstanding: the EU taxonomy is not merely a climate instrument but rests on six criteria, from watercourses and the circular economy to pollution and biodiversity. She describes how it has snowballed from an investor’s tool into a political instrument for driving the Green Deal, and warns against national over-implementation that would leave Finnish companies stricter than their European competitors. Miettinen presses her on the absence of hydropower from the taxonomy and on the treatment of nuclear power, and Löyttyniemi agrees that hydro is hard to understand — its risk levels are of an entirely different order from nuclear. Before the policy, the episode revisits their shared student politics at the Helsinki School of Economics, where a party called the Free Electoral Alliance won on a slogan about eating at the student restaurant once a week, and the founding of Aalto University as a merger of three institutional egos. It closes on her insistence that every form of energy production has undeniable effects on nature, and that consumption itself has to fall.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Highlights on taxonomy and energy
• 01:17 — Guest: Meri Löyttyniemi
• 01:36 — Aalto’s special adviser on sustainable development
• 01:45 — Which previous episode spoke to her more
• 02:53 — Basketball, Awak Kuier and Lauri Markkanen
• 03:54 — NBA draft numbers compared
• 04:48 — Junior basketball, the press and the three-point game
• 05:58 — The Free Electoral Alliance and a populist revolution
• 06:57 — Election victory over Kytky and Kuji
• 07:44 — The establishment felt stale
• 08:00 — The Balanssi environmental club and Rubikon
• 09:00 — Teenage slogans and election campaigns
• 10:00 — Internationality was missing from the business school in the 1990s
• 10:40 — It pays to start networking young
• 11:24 — Greetings to Tomi Lanto, and cooperation across the lines
• 12:20 — A rehabilitation of populism
• 13:00 — An influencer must remember whose side they are on
• 13:34 — We eat at the student restaurant once a week
• 15:03 — The birth of Aalto University as a merger of three egos
• 16:00 — Student unions’ asset masses in different orders of magnitude
• 17:07 — Lawyers gained most from the AYY negotiations
• 18:02 — Metro, Dipoli and the campuses falling into place
• 19:00 — Tampere, Eastern Finland and Turku following
• 19:39 — University and polytechnic combinations
• 19:43 — Finally to the EU taxonomy
• 20:00 — The taxonomy is assumed to be only a climate tool
• 20:54 — Six criteria from watercourses to biodiversity
• 21:20 — Is this a matter for banks or equity investors
• 22:00 — From an investor’s tool to a political instrument
• 23:00 — The recovery package’s green investments
• 24:00 — Taxonomy, sustainability reporting and financial regulation
• 24:57 — National over-implementation should be avoided
• 25:34 — Real emission reductions are what count
• 26:11 — Nuclear, hydro and the limits of the taxonomy
• 27:18 — If hydropower is not renewable, what is
• 27:54 — Sectors outside emissions trading as the problem
• 28:21 — Finland should ally with the other Nordics
• 28:55 — Wind power now works without subsidy
• 29:04 — The power of scale changes the economics
• 29:47 — Energy consumption genuinely has to fall
• 30:42 — Covid gave optimism about change
• 32:02 — A three-degree path, and pessimism
• 32:53 — What 80 episodes have taught
• 33:52 — Hope is running out and it is time to act

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: KY, Aalto ja EU:n vihreä taksonomia | Meri Löyttyniemi | Neuvottelija 79. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.