Response to interpellation 2022/23:152 on the transport sector's climate goals
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD argues that the government is pursuing an ambitious climate policy where the transport supply shall be socio-economically efficient and sustainable 1. KD believes that the focus should be on emissions rather than reducing road traffic 1 2, and that the government is investing in charging infrastructure and electrification 1 2. KD emphasizes that transport efficiency is about accessibility and competitiveness 3 and that the government presents an agenda for increased energy production, including nuclear power, to combat emissions 3. SD welcomes that the government prioritizes road maintenance 4 and views the work as an efficiency effort 5. SD argues that the railway should be improved and maintained for all of Sweden 5. MP believes that the government is making a radical turn by prioritizing energy-intensive modes of transport and scrapping transport efficiency 6. MP argues that it is necessary to reduce the need for cars, trucks, and aviation 6 7 and that additional main lines are required to handle freight traffic and regional traffic 7.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! Daniel Helldén has asked me whether it is the government's view that one of the three identified legs in the work to meet the climate goals within the transport sector, namely a transport-lean society with reduced road traffic, is now to be removed as a tool for meeting the climate goals and, if so, how I intend to act so that the goals can be achieved.
The government is pursuing an ambitious and effective climate policy that is long-term sustainable. For the transport sector, this means that a socio-economically efficient and long-term sustainable transport supply is ensured for the citizens and the business community throughout the country. I do not share the view that reduced road traffic is the main solution to reach the climate goals. I argue instead that it is a prerequisite for good accessibility and competitiveness throughout the country that transport takes place in an efficient and sustainable way.
The government also wants to ensure the freedom to go wherever one wants, whenever one wants - in everyday life, in leisure time, and on vacation - regardless of where in the country one lives. Therefore, we are now expanding the charging infrastructure across the entire country. In addition to a targeted investment within Klimatklivet of 400 million kronor, the government is increasing the investment to ensure improved accessibility to charging infrastructure and increased charging capacity throughout the country to a total of 1.09 billion kronor in 2023. During 2024 and 2025, an additional 1 billion kronor and 505 million kronor respectively are expected to be allocated for the same purpose.
The government also wants to support the companies all over Sweden that are investing in electrifying their truck transports. This not only reduces emissions but also makes the transports significantly more energy-efficient. The government's initiatives therefore also include heavy vehicles and thus the construction of charging infrastructure for trucks at, for example, depots and along roads across the country, starting with regional freight transport in order to gradually form coherent corridors across the entire country.
The government also wants to create conditions for a socio-economically efficient and long-term sustainable transport supply. A prerequisite for this is more coordinated urban development, transport infrastructure, and traffic planning. The government has therefore combined transport and housing issues in a new department from 1 January this year.
Later this year, the government will submit the climate policy action plan to the Riksdag. There, the government will present how we are to act in order to achieve the climate goals.
Daniel Helldén (MP)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer to my question on how the government intends to meet the transport sector's climate goals in light of the fact that the Minister, in a number of interviews, has declared that one of the identified tools for reducing emissions and creating a sustainable transport sector – that which is called a transport-lean society – is no longer relevant.
The Minister has said that we should plan cities for more cars, not fewer, and prioritize the maintenance of the road network instead of prioritizing new railways in the country. It is car travel, truck transport, and aviation, which the Minister also highlights, that should be prioritized. This is a radical shift that is unparalleled in Swedish environmental and climate history.
To prioritize precisely those types of transport that are most energy-intensive, regardless of the development of fuels, and to advocate for those modes of transport that we know are most problematic from the perspective of the need for a sustainable society's growth – it is remarkable. That this is repeatedly put forward by the country's Minister for Infrastructure has a signaling value, in a time of an imminent climate crisis, that makes it very problematic. Why does the minister then do this?
Madam Speaker! We have just heard the Minister's answer to the interpellation, and I am not much wiser from it. The Minister says that the government wants to ensure the freedom to go wherever one wants regardless of where one lives in the country. But no one has said anything else – on the contrary. The Minister also says that he does not share the view that reduced road traffic is the main solution to reach the climate goals. But no one has said that reduced road traffic is the main solution to meet the climate goals. On the contrary – it is one of the solutions.
Climate work requires that we improve the efficiency of vehicles, that we switch fuels, and that we work with transport efficiency. All these three pillars are needed. And transport efficiency means developing our society so that we can live well, move smoothly, while at the same time being able to reduce the total travel with resource-wasting means of transport such as just cars, trucks, and aviation. It does not mean that these modes of travel should disappear – that is a utopia. It means that we shall actively work to reduce the need for just them.
What makes the Minister's statement so problematic is precisely that it shows a nonchalance towards the problems we face. The Minister should know that in all investigations, reports, and analyses, a transport-efficient society is one of several measures and that all are needed. But the Minister signals that this specific measure should be removed, admittedly together with all other measures that the government has scrapped recently.
Madam Speaker! I therefore ask the Minister again whether the Minister considers that car traffic needs to decrease or not in light of the climate crisis. I also ask the Minister whether the heavy transports on the roads should decrease or not in light of the climate crisis.
Jimmy Ståhl (SD)
Madam Speaker! In 2022, we had a Social Democratic government with the Green Party in it. There, we were presented with a national plan. From that national plan, it could be easily read that the maintenance debt would increase from 70 billion to nearly 140 billion. We have, therefore, neglected our roads and our railways.
When I had read the interpellation from Daniel Helldén, I was pleased with the answer from the Minister for Infrastructure – that money is being transferred from road to railway.
But that is not the only thing that has been done, but one has chosen to stop the high-speed railway, which means that one can hopefully get money from the national level and improve the existing railway and make it more efficient.
Madam Speaker! One could compare the road to a house. If you do not take care of the maintenance of the house, i.e., the top layer of the road, water will begin to leak in so that the property is destroyed. The same applies to the road, that the road body is destroyed. If you do not remedy this in time, you must demolish the house, alternatively build a completely new road. It is a waste of resources and tax revenue. That they are trying to maintain the roads, I see as a great pleasure. Of course, we must repair what is broken before it goes too far.
When it comes to transport efficiency, one achieves efficiency when combining car, train, plane, and truck in an optimal way. I have never seen a train set enter an Icabutik, but the truck does. It is needed. To be able to transport the truck, roads were needed, entire roads. This is exactly what I can read from Andreas Carlsson's answer, that we safeguard all infrastructure. This makes me very happy.
If we did not have roads, it would be hopeless. We will, of course, also invest in bicycles. Many more bicycles today, and it is an important part of getting to and from work. But I can promise, Madam Speaker, that a cargo bike can never replace a truck.
Public transport is also important, but it needs roads to transport itself on, at least buses. We invest an enormous amount in public transport and various public transport trains in the form of buses. How are we going to be able to transport them if we don't have any roads?
Madam Speaker! I would like to take the opportunity to ask Infrastructure Minister Andreas Carlson about railway investments: Do you have anything to say about Göteborg-Borås or Hässleholm-Lund? Apparently, there has been a major misunderstanding, and people believe that we are not going to build railways at all. What are the government's plans?
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! Transport is something very positive. Unlike the interpellator, I have that starting point. Transport is the very backbone of our economy. They provide opportunities for jobs and growth, and without them, we would not have a functioning society.
Nine out of ten truck transports occur over distances shorter than 30 miles, and in those cases, rail is rarely competitive. Therefore, it is important not to focus on the transports or what the interpellor describes as transport economy, but on transport efficiency. We shall hunt the emissions, Madam Speaker, not the transports themselves.
Transport is also important for us to be able to build a good society and maintain the sense of community that I believe we all in this chamber cherish. The car is necessary in this context. In large parts of our elongated and partly sparsely populated country, the car is crucial. I do not want to live in a society where the state regulates or dictates who is allowed to travel and who is not allowed to travel. Therefore, transport efficiency is the word that the previous government also used, not the word transport austerity, which is something completely different.
Swedish trucking companies and businesses are already actively working with this today. This is noticeable, not least in the work to streamline transports and transport chains and also in the demand for longer and heavier trucks. It is this that I believe we need to focus on – how we are to achieve a transport-smart society.
Jimmy Ståhl was present on the pressing issue of maintenance. As the vehicle fleet is electrified and emissions decrease, new requirements will arise for us to have a sustainable and functioning transport infrastructure also on the roadside. I do not, however, rule out other major investments. Such investments are already announced and are in the planning stage.
We have announced that the Göteborg-Borås stretch shall be prioritized, and Trafikverket has been tasked to work on that as well as capacity increases in Skåne, taking into account that the Fehmarn Bält connection opens in just a few years. This will place new demands on our entire transport system, and in that case, the question of transport efficiency is important.
As I said, it is the emissions we should focus on, not the transports themselves. Therefore, the government is making major investments in charging infrastructure. This, together with functional road maintenance, is important so that people will have the opportunity to travel in emission-free cars in the parts where one cannot choose any other mode of transport in the future.
We need to see every mode of transport as part of a functioning transport system where the overriding goal is to reduce emissions. This must happen quickly, and in that regard, the government has high ambitions, Madam Speaker.
Daniel Helldén (MP)
Madam Speaker! The Minister says that he is chasing emissions. Transport efficiency and transport economy are precisely about chasing emissions and about trying to achieve a sustainable and robust society that can handle the transports that are needed but in a smarter way. I am a bit surprised when the Minister says that it is something else. From the interpellation, where I write about transport efficiency and transport economy, it appears very clearly that they are synonymous terms.
Just as in the answer, the Minister speaks of things that no one has said. Who has spoken about deciding who shall be allowed to travel? No one has spoken about that, but it is about achieving a well-functioning society where we can get our transports to work without large emissions. We are to get rid of the emissions, and we can achieve the resource efficiency that applies in terms of traveling. It is about the number of vehicles, what we do when we move, how we do it together, and how we build our cities.
Unfortunately, we now see that the principle of working in the transport-efficient way does not apply. The only thing I can understand from what the Minister says is that we are to increase car traffic and freight traffic on the roads and, as he has said in interviews, fly more. That is, as it is there. The only thing that remains after all the scrapping is electrification. Electrification is good, but it is not enough.
The government has stopped the expansion of the new railway infrastructure with new main lines, which will affect the country for decades and damage the possibility of creating efficient passenger and freight transport. We need the railway. The Minister knows that the EU says that we should shift the transport to rail. We will not manage the transition if we do not do this.
The government has taken the money away from railway maintenance and put it on roads. Member Jimmy Ståhl emphasizes that we should maintain what we have, but the money has indeed been taken away from the railway. They have cut back on the urban environment agreements, which could effectively steer towards sustainable travel in our cities. They are lowering fuel prices and working frantically to remove all biofuels from fossil fuels. They are scrapping the support for an electric vehicle transition by lowering bonus-malus overnight.
The only thing we are holding onto is a charging cable. We need to charge our vehicles, but we need everything else as well. That is the point.
In the interpellation answer, the Minister stated that the government is pursuing an ambitious and effective climate policy that is long-term and sustainable. I am just wondering: Where then?
At the same time, the Minister states in the response that during the latter part of the year, the climate policy action plan will be presented, where the government will report on how it will act to meet the climate goals. Here, it sounds as if everything is solved.
Ambitious and effective, it is spoken of. You don't know what you are doing. You have torn away everything that existed. Then you say that something will come later. The only thing you say is that it is the electrification. The electrification work has been ongoing, is ongoing, and continues. It is nothing new.
The way you work is so strange. You pull everything away. You have one thing left, and then you say that you are ambitious and efficient at some point in the future. I do not understand where that is going to happen anywhere.
Jimmy Ståhl (SD)
Madam Speaker! I have a completely different view in this interpellation debate. I see the government's work as a work of streamlining.
When I started as a member of Parliament, more people traveled on the Stockholm metro in a day than traveled on all of SJ's trains during a year. That is how much people travel in the local areas, in the regional.
Madam Speaker! There are very few who think: I am going to work in Stockholm, so I am moving to Malmö. Now, a railway must be built so that I can get to work quickly.
No, people want to live close to their workplaces.
Now that we will probably get a Fehmarn Bält tunnel with much more railway, it is also important that rail yards are expanded. Today's trains are 630 meters, and the trains of the future will be more than 1 kilometer long. We must take care of these trains. We have a bag of money. Shall we spend all the money so that very few will travel between Malmö and Stockholm, or shall we build railway and improve and maintain the one we have so that all of Sweden benefits from the railway? I definitely think that we should have a railway for everyone. And of course, it is the case that if we make today's railway more efficient, it will become better.
I also wanted to take the opportunity to ask the minister a question and at the same time take the opportunity to thank you for a very good interpellation debate. Does the minister know if there is any timetable for potentially starting the construction of railway stations in southern Skåne?
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! Just as I said in a previous post, we will return when the climate action plan is presented to the Riksdag. In the previous climate action plan, from the previous government, a transport-efficient society was defined in the following way, which may be of interest for the interpellor to note: In the transport-efficient society, transport work is carried out as efficiently as possible from energy, environmental and economic perspectives in order to achieve accessibility, sustainability and competitiveness.
I would also like to continue this debate with the other parts that fall under the term transport efficiency. Note that I am not saying transport economy, which the interpellator used as a synonym here. Transport efficiency is also about accessibility throughout the country, and it is about competitiveness for our business sector to create jobs and growth throughout the country.
What visions and ideas does the interpellator have there? It has been quite quiet on that front in this debate so far.
I will also say something positive. It is that the interpellor says that electrification is good. On that, we agree.
We are hearing here that the government is holding a charging cable. We are holding much more than that. What has been decided by previous governments is the answer to where the electricity for this charging cable will come from, so that we can manage the electrification and the transition. Not least, Daniel Helldén's party has previously not had any real answer to that. Now the government presents a very extensive agenda to increase energy production from all energy sources, not least from nuclear power, which is fossil-free and which can ensure that we can combat emissions and not transport them.
Commuting and freight traffic are in focus for the government's work regarding investments and maintenance on the railway side. And in that regard, I want to link to Jimmy Ståhl's question about a timetable. We will have to return to that. Now, a mandate has been given to Trafikverket regarding increased capacity in Skåne. And the Lund-Hässleholm stretch is specifically pointed out in this regard. We therefore have a great reason to return to that.
Daniel Helldén (MP)
Madam Speaker! What is stated in the old climate action plan also means that transport should be reduced. It is inherent in the concept. Then I know that there are some within Trafikverket who would like it to be relativized so that traffic can increase.
But if one looks at what all the expert agencies, in addition to Trafikverket, have said, it is something else that it is about. And it is central in this context. We need to reduce the transports that are most energy-intensive and ensure that we get a smarter solution when it comes to other transports and make it work in a good way so that everyone gets mobility, accessibility, and the possibility to live their lives in a good way in Sweden.
Jimmy Ståhl wants to bring the issue of high-speed trains and the issue of new main lines into the discussion. The Minister is also looking into that.
If we are to manage to carry out the upgrading of the railway network that we have, especially when it concerns the main lines, we need additional main lines. We cannot accommodate the freight traffic that will be needed in our railway network with fewer tracks. We will not be able to get more to travel regionally and locally on the railway if we do not take these measures. The Minister of State also knows this, as he has several times in his motions previously highlighted exactly this, not least when it concerns Jönköping and the areas around Jönköping. What incredible benefit this would have for the local business community, for the labor market regions, and for the freight traffic. We cannot continue to patch and repair. And if we are to upgrade the main lines, we will be forced to close them. Then the trains will stand still there, and people will not be able to transport themselves.
Then perhaps it is so that the Minister thinks that one should get into the car instead and drive around. The Green Party does not think so.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! I thank you for a clarifying interpellation debate. I appreciated the exchange.
It emerged at the end of the debate what it is about, namely that it is the car that is the problem and not the emissions. We do not share the same view on that. It is not the transports that are to be fought, but it is the emissions that are to be fought. We have very high ambitions there. We will return with even more detailed plans regarding this in our climate action plan, which will be presented to the Riksdag.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.