Newsroom

Embraced by the Gulf of Finland, Kronstadt bathes in sunlight. Several kilometres away, its cathedral is dimly silhouetted against the horizon.

The Chair of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference, MP Christina Gestrin from Finland, urges all countries bordering the Baltic Sea to have their national action plans for the marine environment ready by the beginning of 2011.

The demand was put forward at the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference in Mariehamn, Åland on Monday.

NEFCO has launched a EUR 30 million capital raising exercise for its carbon procurement vehicle, the NEFCO Carbon Fund (NeCF). The Tranche II subscription will be aimed principally at post 2012 purchases.

The NeCF was launched in April 2008, to procure high quality compliance units for obligated entities under the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

NEFCO and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment are financing the modernization of ten small wastewater treatment plants in St. Petersburg.  NEFCO has approved a loan of EUR 5 million and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment has committed EUR 1 million for the project.

The other financiers of the scheme are the Northern Dimension Environmental Programme (NDEP) and the local waterworks company Vodokanal, which is also responsible for implementing the project.

NEFCO and the waterworks in Sosnovy Bor, Northwestern Russia, signed on Wednesday an agreement on upgrading the local wastewater treatment.

NEFCO will grant a loan of 750,000 EUR in a project, which is expected to reduce the discharges of eutrophying phosphorus by some 22 tonnes per year. This corresponds to the annual untreated discharges of wastewater from approximately 30,000 people.

NEFCO has assumed the chairmanship of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP).

Specifically NEFCO will manage the activities of the organization’s Steering Group, which is responsible for initiating and implementing environmental development projects in the Northern Dimension Area of Northwestern Russia.

It is hard to describe today’s district heating production in St. Petersburg without feeling the wing-beats of history. The world’s first district heating pipeline was laid to the address Fontanka 96 in St. Petersburg in 1924.

The NEFCO Carbon Fund (NeCF) has signed three long term Agreements to procure certified emission reductions from three small hydro power projects in northern Vietnam.

The renewable energy projects will be implemented under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and will generate predominantly post 2012 credits.

The Nordic Development Fund’s Board of Directors has approved financing of EUR 10 million for a new climate initiative named the ProClimate Facility (ProCF).

The new facility will be implemented in partnership with NEFCO’s Carbon Finance and Funds team, which has extensive experience of purchasing emission reductions from climate projects across the world.

The car drive from Pulkovo airport to Nurma some 55 kilometres east of St. Petersburg takes us through Ingermanland. The Finnish-sounding names of the villages and rivers testify to a Finno-Ugric past that continues to thrive in the region where JSC Rurik Agro, a Danish company, has chosen to set up its pig farm.