Green Tech: Tuomas Riski On How Norsepower’s Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On The Environment

Make sure it’s possible to make your product or concept. It might seem like a great idea in your mind, but technically implementing it might be impossible. Validating your business can take a really long time and a lot of pain and effort to figure out exactly what people need and what they’re willing to pay for it. It’s quite common that people overestimate the technical feasibility of their product idea, so really bring in outside voices to avoid developer bias and try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tuomas Riski, CEO & Partner at Norsepower.

Tuomas Riski is the CEO and Partner at Norsepower. Tuomas is a serial entrepreneur who has had a successful career as Partner and Vice President in Innofactor Plc, the largest Finnish IT service provider focusing on Microsoft technology. He was actively involved in developing the business from five people to a publicly listed company of more than 200 employees. In 2012, he joined the founding team of Norsepower to help reduce global carbon emissions.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

Growing up in Helsinki is a bit different from growing up in other capital cities. The city is so closely connected to nature that you’re only 15 minutes away from the Baltic sea, forests, and heaps of amazing wildlife.

Growing up so close to the sea was a brilliant opportunity to learn how to sail — I’ve been sailing practically my whole life. While studying Physics at the Helsinki University of Technology, I started racing and sailing competitively, and it’s been a passion of mine ever since. Last year, I came 4th in the Offshore Racing Congress Double-Handed World Championships! So you could say the environment and the ocean, in particular, have been close to my heart since I was a kid.

Towards the end of the 90s, I realized that more clean tech is needed to solve our world’s problems. And I realized that it’s possible to develop technology that has a payback period after investment, meaning that we can make green tech profitable, and that’s really the way we’re going to make change happen — save money and save the world… it’s a no-brainer!

After exiting the previous company and getting it listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, I decided that I needed to change things up and start saving the planet, so I brought all my learnings as an entrepreneur to Norsepower.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

One of the most interesting stories about Norsepower was how we developed the first pilot project for rotor sails. We needed a ship to test Rotor Sails on. So in 2015, we teamed up with the shipping company Bore to test the sails. And they just gave us the ship for free to be used as a test platform. We paid for the installation project and had all of our tests verified by VTT and NAPA. They confirmed that we could achieve fuel savings of 6% using two small rotor sails on a route in the North Sea. With these kinds of savings, the payback for the tech was just four years! With multiple large rotor sails, the savings can be 20%!

The end customer was so impressed that they actually then bought the pilot Rotor Sails from us afterward! It was pretty easy to say we’d validated our business idea.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Naturally, many people have helped me throughout my career. But if I had to name one, it would be Prof. Dr. H.C. Kai Levander. Kai, who’s still one of our advisors today, was instrumental in our first year of operations.

Although the concept of rotor sails was first devised simultaneously by Finnish inventor and architect Sigurd Savonius and German engineer Anton Flettner in the 1920s, Kai had an idea of how to modernize them. Nearly a hundred years later, Kai’s ideas are reflected in the core mechanics of Norsepower Rotor Sails, which do exactly the same as a sail of a sailing ship. But our product isn’t only a rotor sail; it’s also an automation system.

Nearly a decade later and we’re still using the same mechanical concepts, so we’ve clearly developed something that works for the long run.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“If there’s something I can do today, I don’t wait for tomorrow.”

This is especially true for me on two levels.

1. When it comes to saving the planet, we need to act now — the world can’t wait. Emissions are at an all-time high and rising. We need to reduce global emissions, and we can’t wait until tomorrow to make it happen.
2. As an entrepreneur and CEO, you have a million tasks on your table all the time. I know that many people rely on me to push things forward, so I need to get them done to prevent being a bottleneck. This means I need to master the art of prioritization so that I can maintain a healthy work-life balance.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Sisu. This is a brilliant Finnish word that doesn’t have a direct translation. Sisu encompasses the qualities of perseverance and determination, helping people overcome the adversities they face in life. It’s about grit, tenacity, bravery, resilience, and hardiness. Every entrepreneur has sisu. Running a successful business doesn’t happen overnight. At Norsepower, we’ve broken things, failed, tripped up, fallen over — you name it, we’ve done it. You have to be brave to fail because failing means you stepped outside your comfort zone — and that’s hard. But that’s ultimately where innovation and success come from — you fail, learn, and iterate again. That takes a huge amount of grit and determination.
2. Moving fast. Not everyone likes this trait — researchers and scientists tend to prefer moving a bit slower than I operate. But when you launch a startup, everything is on fire and needs your attention, and decisions need to be made fast. And I don’t want to be a bottleneck for anyone else, which means I need to get tasks done. Reaching your goals means you have to move forward — I just prefer to get there quicker than everyone else.
3. Be versatile. At some point or another, I’ve done every single role in this company — whether it’s sales, product development, repair activities of Rotor Sails, marketing, or HR. When you’re an early-stage company, you’re super hands-on. You haven’t got the money to outsource development, so you need to do it yourself.
4. When your company grows a bit bigger, you become more of a cheerleader, and your function in the business changes. Nowadays, I spend more time chatting with people than anything else. I keep my finger on the pulse of our team, partners, investors — everyone in our business — so that I can make good decisions that work for everyone.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on the planet and the environment. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

Our vision is to set the standard in bringing sails back to ocean transportation and empower shipping toward reaching the goal of zero carbon emissions.

Approximately 90% of everything we consume is moved by sea. As world trade continues to grow, there is an increasing number of ships crossing our oceans, each using vast quantities of energy and emitting significant amounts of CO2. In fact, the shipping industry is responsible for at least 940 million tonnes/year of C02 — approximately 3% of the world’s total CO2 emissions.

How do you think your technology can address this?

We’ve made it our mission to reduce the environmental impact of shipping through the commercialization of innovative and modern sail power. We have mechanical sails which push the ships forward to reduce the main engine load and all related emissions by significant amounts.

Extensive measurement campaigns on Norsepower reference vessels have proven the operational performance of Rotor Sail technology. For example, during the first year of operation, the Rotor Sails on the Maersk Pelican reduced the fuel burn by 8.2%. This translates to an 8.2% carbon footprint reduction, significantly improving operational compliance.

How do you think this might change the world?

If every existing ship was fitted with rotor sails, it would be the equivalent of taking 30 million cars off the road — approximately 82M tons of carbon would be saved annually, nearly 10% of the whole shipping industry’s emissions. As Bill Gates says, “You’ll never solve climate change by asking people to consume less. […] The only real solution is to innovate better and cheaper alternatives.”

That’s exactly what we’re doing at Norsepower. Our supply chain hangs in the balance, and any disruptions to it can have huge knock-on effects on the prices of goods around the world. So we need to make the sea work for us in a way that preserves and conserves the planet.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

It’s hard to really see any risks with this type of technology. Everything’s certified and safe to be used, and we’ve made it as easy as possible to use our automation system. Sure, typical deliveries can cost several million euros which is a big up-front cost, but the long-term savings are huge, and every investment is paid back through fuel savings and emissions reductions.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. Make sure it’s possible to make your product or concept. It might seem like a great idea in your mind, but technically implementing it might be impossible. Validating your business can take a really long time and a lot of pain and effort to figure out exactly what people need and what they’re willing to pay for it. It’s quite common that people overestimate the technical feasibility of their product idea, so really bring in outside voices to avoid developer bias and try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.
2. Make sure that, whoever the end user is, they have the financial incentive to start using it. Ultimately, green tech needs to be profitable to catch on. We’re still seeing BP post record profits despite us being in the depths of an energy crisis. We need to be transitioning more to greener energy solutions, but the payback time is still quite long. If you’re building a green tech business, you need a trigger that’s going to make people make the change. It could be a stick or carrot, but ultimately people need the financial incentive to use your product. This could be something like EU regulations making industries become cleaner or face sanctions, or that you get discounted rates for using cleaner energy. The financial feasibility really needs to be there. But you also need restraint. For example, it might be better for the environment if there was this one particular feature in your product — yet, it doesn’t make any financial sense because the payback period would be too long. This means people won’t adopt your technology and will look for cheaper alternatives.
3. Make sure it’s a win-win situation for everyone. As climate tech needs to have financial feasibility, it needs to be a win-win situation for everyone. It’s not really realistic that people will radically change because of the climate — and they certainly won’t want to consume less. We need to make things and do things at the same price or cheaper to accomplish the same goal in a climate-conscious way.
4. Ensure your clean tech innovations are ecological. For clean tech, it needs to be actually ecological. One good way to ensure that you’re making a well-rounded impact on society is to cross reference them with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
5. Make sure that a mega-trend actively supports your idea. Whereas short-term trends guide business, mega-trends show where new markets are likely to emerge. In the case of cleantech, converging mega-trends such as decarbonization, resource scarcity, digitalization, globalization, and consumer consumption have paved the way forward.

Organizations that can recognize global mega-trends and take the changing world into account will be the market leaders of the future. If the mega-trends don’t actively support your idea, then you’re more unlikely to interest consumers, investors, and partners with your product.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Well, I could discuss with them that we only have this one planet to live on and that we’re a tiny yet significant disruptor of the entire ecosystem. And that it’s our responsibility to ensure that we don’t make everyone worse off by failing to address climate change.

Or I could discuss how to make sustainability profitable and how to identify feasible business cases that will make the world a cleaner place. Ultimately, it’s about seeing megatrends, learning about the ones you believe in, and identifying how technology aligns with the forecast of your megatrend. The megatrend we’ve identified and worked towards is decarbonization.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Bill Gates — he’s invested over $2 BILLION toward climate technologies, including direct air capture, solar energy, and nuclear fission. How incredible is that? He’s the prime example of an entrepreneur using his platform to make changes he wants to see in the world — something that we should all aspire to.

I’d love to meet him for breakfast and learn more about his sisu!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow my work on LinkedIn or keep up to date with all of Norsepower’s latest goings on through our website and social channels! You can see Norsepower’s Bedtime Story film on YouTube here.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.