24 October 2006
Written by Jakob
Hopeful initiative, but more needs to be done.
Once again, Sweden is showing an impressive will to take the lead in the race to reduce GHG (GreenHouse Gases) emissions. The state-owned Swedish energy giant (5th largest electricity generator and the top heat generator in the EU) Vattenfall has come out with a remarkable proposal for a multi-national framework to reduce emissions. The framework is to be implemented over the next 100 years, with a view to start measuring GHG allocations 2015 and then re-calculating these every five years, with richer nations taking a larger burden per capita and the very poorest nations given exceptions until they display certain levels of economic activity.
This is brilliant because, even though the company is state-owned, the idea originates from what is essentially the private sector. That is exactly what we need. Combined with the ambition (stated by the previous Swedish government which of course makes it uncertain whether it will be maintained by the current one) to make Sweden independent of fossile fuels by 2020 it is a very, very strong indication that the discussion has shifted from stating that there is a problem to talking about solutions to that problem.
One asks oneself: “Why Vattenfall”, and according to CEO Lars Josefsson this was simply because no one else wanted to:
“…we couldn’t find anyone else [in the business community] interested in this work.”
Scary stuff, indeed.
Still, a good step forward even though I doubt that it will be possible to gain a wide enough agreement to implement this. There are a few other things that I would like to see done as well, and the onus is now on the new centre-right coalition to come out and clearly state that this is something they will be gearing their policy around (there was frightfully little speak of their environmental agenda during the campaign, other than a 10000SEK reduction of car taxes for those buying hybrid cars). Other things that need to be done, and done now, are:
- Massive infrastructural investments, specifically towards high-speed trains and public transport systems, but also towards modern energy plants with either low or no carbon emissions or carbon-storage facilities such as the pilot coal plant being built by Vattenfall in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany. This plant will of course be using fossile fuel, which is never ideal since the resource is non-renewable, but at least emissions are captured and stored instead of let out into the air.
- A continued shift in taxation away from income flows and toward environmental costs. This should be paired with financial incentives to reward shifts toward low-energy solutions for cars, heating, electrity and so on. It also needs to be implemented both towards private persons and the corporate sector.
- Economical punishments towards trade partners who are less than zealous in their pursuit of low-emissions production and transport. This could, in a worst case scenario, take the form of import tariffs on products which are energy-intensive, but it should be possible to find other solutions, such as VAT penalties to diminish excess packaging etc.
- Massive R&D investments, both in the private sector (facilitated by for example tax reliefs or funding packages to make it appealing) and through universities, into alternative energy production, energy conservation and emissions storage. Maybe even take an entire technical university and profile it as “energy management”-oriented, with projects to combine for example combustion techniques with industrial design and economical-theoretical projects?
Unfortunately, I don’t think the current Swedish government has the cojones required to do this (in fairness, the cojones needed to go through with large-scale changes like these would have to be the size of cannonballs). But if they don’t, they’re taking a much bigger risk than if they do.
Links are available here:
PDF of the discussion by Vattenfall.
Alliance for Global Sustainability.