The most wide spread newspaper of Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, published 9.8.2017 an expert letter to the editor about the role of cities and municipalities in climate action. The article ”Municipalities need state support for climate action” ("Kunnat tarvitsevat myös valtiota ilmastotoimissa") was written by Milja Heikkinen from UEP group and her second advisor Tuomas Ylä-Anttila from Department of Political and Economic Studies. It's especially related to two scientific articles produced in UEP group. One of them is “The need for non-climate services – Empirical evidence from Finnish municipalities”, by Räsänen et al. (2017). The article was published in the journal Climate Risk Management and it's open access. The other scientific article is currently under double-blind review, which is why further details can’t be offered here.
On 13.8., our expert opinion was followed by a letter to the editor titled “Helsinki has a long way to go before it can call itself front-runner in climate policy” ("Helsingillä on matkaa ilmastopolitiikan edelläkävijäksi") by Coal-free Finland campaign. They argued that Helsinki should be more ambitious in its attempts to stop coal burning.