Frederik Clement, Senior Associate at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and member of the CIP Foundation’s Youth Advisory Board, joined the “Young Voices, Green Choices” workshop in Bucharest, from Denmark. He offered an institutional model that impressed the Romanian audience by its originality. His presentation described how a major private equity firm managing over 32 billion euros in renewable infrastructure has built an independent governance framework to integrate youth perspectives into strategic decision-making.

The CIP Foundation, a non-profit entity funded by CIP’s senior partners, operates as an “action tank” that connects business, science, and policy to identify practical pathways for decarbonization. Three years ago, it created a Youth Advisory Board of 12 members — young professionals, investors, engineers, and climate advocates — tasked with producing concrete project proposals each year for consideration by the Foundation’s board.

“We meet six or seven times a year,” Clement explained, to discuss “what we see as huge challenges in society. We refine the ideas and then propose three to five very concrete suggestions and projects that we would like the CIP Foundation to work on.” Their ideas must meet strict criteria: scalability, financial viability, and long-term sustainability. One of their recent proposals, a project on peak-shaving through digital automation, has already evolved into a full-scale initiative to reduce grid stress by aligning consumption patterns with renewable generation.

Clement emphasized that all Youth Board members work voluntarily, driven by the conviction that intergenerational dialogue improves decisions. He explained that the Youth Advisory Board’s mission is to bring the next generation’s perspective into the boardroom, ensuring that the Foundation’s leadership can anticipate and respond to emerging challenges.

For Romania, where young professionals are often engaged informally through NGOs but rarely through corporate governance structures, this Danish example demonstrated how participation can be institutionalized — transforming enthusiasm into influence and ideas into investment.

The workshop “Young Voices, Green Choices” was financed by the Nordic Council and it was co-organized by the Royal Danish Embassy in Bucharest, the Embassy of Finland in Bucharest, the Consulate of Iceland in Bucharest, the Embassy of Sweden in Bucharest and the Norwegian Embassy in Bucharest, Energynomics and the Faculty of Energy Engineering of the University Politehnica of Bucharest.