Västerbotten has a growing cleantech cluster with high class R&D and a number of successful recycling and environmental technology enterprises. Some of the areas of specialization are soil remediation, railway decontamination, sustainable building, forest ecology and the recovery of metals from electronic scrap.

The powerful expansion of the mining, metallurgy and pulp and paper industries ensure that regional markets for environmental technology are kept bubbling. The nearby mining and offshore industries in Norway, Finnish Lapland and the Murmansk/Kola Peninsula region, are other high-potential markets for environmental know-how, clean up projects and new decontamination techniques.