Sari Mannonen is business leader and a board member, passionate about transforming and growing businesses, partnerships and ESG. Currently working in one of the biggest energy companies in Finland, Helen Ltd, as Senior Vice President, Solutions Business & Portfolio development, including hydrogen & P2X, solar & wind energy, e-mobility, smart buildings, heating, cooling & electricity product and service development. Prior to Helen, she was leading UPM Biofuels Business unit.

20+ years of experience in leading international business, sales & marketing in global companies within various sectors. Showcases include transformative business strategy, new business development to highly profitable, stable business unit, sustainability (ESG) development, branding, bringing in new global partnerships, ensuring profitable growth, building distributor network and marketing strategy.

Sari holds a PhD in biochemistry and has studied business management and leadership in several internationally acclaimed universities.

Q & A

1. What does your organization do in the energy transition?

Finnish energy company Helen Ltd helps to make everyday life a little easier for over 600,000 customers in Finland. In addition to heat, cooling and electricity, we offer solutions for regional and renewable energy, smart buildings and electric transport. We are developing a smarter, carbon-neutral energy system that enables everyone to produce, use and save energy with respect for the environment. We aim to achieve 100% carbon neutrality in our energy production by 2030.

Helen was the first Finnish energy company to receive approval for our emissions reduction targets from the Science Based Targets initiative. We are making significant investments in a sustainable and modern energy system, and in the next few years we will build a total of more than 2,000 megawatts of capacity to replace fossil energy production by 2025. Investments in a diverse production structure in terms of both electricity and heating guarantee our security of supply and maintenance and the continuation of our green transition towards carbon-neutral energy production. We produce renewable electricity with hydro, wind, and solar power and heat with biomass, as well as with heat pumps from various waste energy flows, and are constantly developing more efficient ways to produce, store and recycle energy.

The second quarter 2023 started with a historic milestone as we closed the Hanasaari B power plant, which had served the people of Helsinki reliably for nearly 50 years. This reduces Helen’s carbon dioxide emissions by an impressive 40 per cent. We are exploring the opportunity to build an industrial scale hydrogen plant in Helsinki, which would produce clean hydrogen that supports the green transition of society. At the same time, we are investigating the potential role that hydrogen production and small modular nuclear reactors could play in district heat production.

2. Why did you agree to get involved in the Lisbon Energy Summit?

The Lisbon Energy Summit & Exhibition is nowadays one of Europe’s leading energy transition events, where policy-makers, project developers, investors and innovators engage to accelerate the green energy revolution. It is also about innovation across different sectors.
For me, it is a pleasure to work in partnership with respected international energy leaders and in an advisor role, be able not only to participate, but also to design the conference programme to redefine the energy transition and confront the most business-critical challenges that our industry is facing together.

3. What is one thing as an industry/society we can do today to move the needle on accelerating the transition?

Every single positive action counts, so we can all participate, but innovation across Renewable Energy Systems through sector integration is key to wider success.