Response to interpellation 2023/24:535 on the transparency of the government's climate policy
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
L argues that the government has been open with its calculations by registering and releasing underlying documents for review 1 2 3. L emphasizes that one must start from the current decisions, such as the reduction of the reduction obligation, and that the climate action plan contains 70 concrete proposals where the expansion of the electricity system is the core 2 4. L argues that the government offices follow all rules and that there is no reason to lack transparency 3. S argues that the action plan lacks concrete measures and is rather a plan about a plan 5. S believes that the government should have presented a plan with concrete measures to reach the environmental goals and that the current plan is a hope for future measures 6. S criticizes that the government has not communicated that a major reform is still missing to reach net zero 6.
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 Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
has asked me why I and the government have chosen not to make the climate calculations in the climate action plan public despite their importance for the assessment of the government's climate policy, what measures I and the government intend to take to increase transparency and openness regarding climate-related data and analyses, and how I and the government intend to ensure that future climate calculations and relevant information documents are made available to the public and the Riksdag.
Madam Speaker! In connection with the decision on the climate action plan, the underlying material for, among other things, the calculations made during the preparation of the plan was also registered. These documents have been requested by several parties and have been disclosed. The media reports that Joakim Järrebring refers to are, as far as I know and understand, based on the documents that have been requested. There is therefore every possibility to review and criticize the government's policy in the climate area.
The Government also tasked the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Economic Research in October 2023 to jointly develop a guidance with methods for assessing the effectiveness of Swedish climate policy.
The effects of climate policy are also reported according to the requirements placed on the government in the Climate Act (2017:720). The government reports a number of climate effect calculations and climate analyses annually in its climate report. This is an extensive task that involves several agencies and which takes place entirely in accordance with the principle of public access and is open to scrutiny. I welcome that scrutiny but see no reason to take any further measures.
Joakim Järrebring (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer.
We face our time's greatest challenge: the climate crisis. It is a challenge that requires decisive measures, concrete plans, and immediate actions. Therefore, I have, with some disappointment, taken part in the government's so-called climate action plan.
We have been presented with a plan that sounds ambitious. All the way to net zero, it says. But when one strips away the well-formulated talking points and searches for the concrete measures, one finds, to one's surprise, a content-wise empty page. It is not an action plan in the true sense of the word. When it is boiled down, it is a graph, largely based on the previous government's policy, which shows an ambition to reach all the way to net zero. If one is to be generous, it is perhaps a plan about a plan rather than the decisiveness that the current urgent climate crisis demands.
My interpellation takes its starting point in that when the government and the minister proudly presented their so-called action plan, they did so without mentioning that the graph intended to illustrate the government's policy, the so-called target path, was in fact based on the effect of the reduction obligation on emissions. In his answer, the minister pointed out that it appears in the underlying material, which was also registered in connection with the so-called action plan, that the climate calculation is precisely based on the effect of the reduction obligation and that transparency and openness are thus ensured. Well, it is not the end of the world that we disagree on this. The serious issue is that the action plan does not contain the measures required for the graph to be accurate.
Does the Government agree with my description that the so-called action plan is a plan about a plan for future policy measures rather than an action plan that, when we implement the measures in the plan, takes us all the way to net zero?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Madam Speaker! This interpellation concerns the transparency in the government's climate policy. Here, Member Järrebring argues that it appears in the media that we have failed to publish climate calculations and that this shows a lack of transparency and openness. I shall state in the chamber that the government has registered all underlying documents for the calculations and that the calculations are based on analyses and calculations from our agencies, which are then combined with the politically made decisions, for example, that the government chooses to lower the reduction obligation for diesel from 33 percent to 6 percent.
One also needs to include the changes we have made in fuel taxes, where we have ensured to alleviate the population's burden of bearing high fuel prices as a consequence of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, a poor economy, and a high reduction obligation in combination. This is something that needs to be taken into account when making a calculation.
It is not the case that the officials sitting in the Government Offices who perform the calculations can base their work on the previous government's conducted policy with a high reduction obligation to reach the goals; instead, one can only base it on the decided policy that the government has conducted. There is an appendix regarding the reduction obligation where we point out the reduction that prevails until a certain period and that we intend to produce a new tool through a policy instrument investigation that looks at how this shall be done.
Madam Speaker! The reason why we do so is simply, for example, that criticism has been voiced against the previous government's plan. It concerns the calculation that the previous government showed in its action plan, and it showed how one would reach one of the goals - a line with a reduction obligation that would reach up to 60 percent. It is that change that we have chosen to make to the previous policy. There was a criticism that the previous government's decisions were made on substandard preparatory grounds, and we now want to investigate how the instruments should be designed moving forward and what combination of instruments we can have so that we do not end up in the same situation as last time. That is how we choose to work.
Regarding the interpellation itself, which concerns transparency, it is important to point out that we have handed over all the calculations we have made. The media figures referred to in the article are such figures and details that I have sat and explained to the journalist just outside the chamber. I have explained how the Government Offices calculate, and I have brought with me printouts of email conversations between the Government Offices' officials and myself. I have been generous and open with all information. It is an important part of Swedish politics.
What should be pointed out here is that the documents that have been requested have been handed over, and they have then been made public. That is also the reason why Joakim Järrebring can refer to the documents. They are simply public.
Joakim Järrebring (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the detailed answer.
My objection regarding transparency concerns how the Minister himself and the government have communicated the action plan. It is said that it is the first time there is an action plan that takes us to net zero by 2045.
As I have understood it from what the Minister has explained and what I have heard in the media earlier, the government shall investigate a national emissions trading system that is to replace the reduction obligation in the long run. But in order, as it is often said, not to put all eggs in one basket, one shall also, according to a principle of "all streams are small," obtain many measures that could ensure that the fuel price at the pump does not need to be over 40 kronor per liter from 2027. All calculations show that such an emissions trading system would need to push up the costs for the fuel to those levels for us to reach all the way to net zero 2045.
The problem is that all increased emissions until 2027 we will have to handle after 2027. The Minister is therefore making the transition harder for the next Riksdag and the next government to manage. It is someone else who at some other time will have to manage the transition.
The consequences of delaying concrete climate actions are both immediate and long-term. By postponing necessary measures now, we risk causing irreversible damage to our planet, which in turn will have profound effects on everything from biodiversity to human health and also the economy. Already today, we see how extreme weather such as droughts and floods affect agriculture, the supply of food, and food security for millions of people globally.
These are not future speculations, but this is a reality we face here and now. To delay measures means that the government chooses to accept a world where these catastrophes become increasingly common and increasingly serious.
Furthermore, future generations will bear the heaviest burden of your current procrastination. By not acting decisively today, you are placing an unfair burden on future generations. It is a burden that encompasses both ecological debt and limited opportunities to remedy the problems. The economic costs of managing the effects of climate change will also increase exponentially, placing an unsustainable financial pressure on future budgets.
We have a duty to act now, not only for our own sake but for the well-being of all future generations and for the planet we all share. Therefore, we do not have time for plans for plans. It is time for real action. We need an action plan that does not just promise changes in the future but also initiates the change here and now. It must be a plan that is clear, measurable and, above all, feasible.
Instead of presenting an abstract vision of a greener future, I strongly urge the Minister to return with a real action plan with clear measures, deadlines, and distribution of responsibility.
In conclusion, I would like to ask if the Minister is considering returning to the Riksdag with a real action plan with measures that take us all the way to net zero. Or is the Minister satisfied with having a plan for a plan during this parliamentary term?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Madam Speaker! If we allow ourselves to deviate so much from the subject of today's interpellation, I am happy to answer what we should do in the short term, here and now, to succeed with the climate transition. Personally, I am frustrated that we always speak of the climate issue as something that will happen in the future, when we know that it is something that is happening here and now. Global warming is highly tangible, not least in other parts of the world but also here in Sweden and in Europe.
This is something that we take into account in many ways and that previous governments have taken into account in many ways, for example by developing initiatives such as Klimatklivet and Industriklivet. These are initiatives that are now larger than ever because the government chooses to expand them.
We have chosen to make the initiative to restore wetlands permanent and expand it so that the funds are available. There are now more funds to apply for to restore wetlands than there have ever been.
We have established a scrapping premium to ensure to provide further incentives so that those who want to switch from a fossil-fueled passenger car to an electric-driven one can do so with the state's help. We have established a market introduction support for heavy vehicles so that the threshold is lowered to switch heavy vehicles to electric-driven and fossil-free vehicles. We know that the heavy vehicles roll for many hours on the roads with heavy loads that consume a lot of fuel. It is therefore highly effective to ensure to contribute to the transition of the heavy part of our transport sector.
We have developed many different parts concerning how our energy system should be able to live up to an electrification. Given all the fossil fuels that are to be phased out from our society, that which is to replace it must be there, unless one wants factories to shut down, people to become unemployed, and the Swedish people to become poorer. Therefore, the electricity system must function. We must have an energy system that as a whole can contribute to heating our properties and electrifying our industrial and transport sectors. In that case, one needs to expand one's energy policy. Today, we have, among other things, presented a government bill that shall contribute to this.
The most important thing, therefore, is that if we are to have our society switch from the dirty and the fossil to the clean, the clean must be there. It must be stable and secure.
I hope that the Social Democrats, in the same way as they handle the other areas of climate policy with great seriousness, can handle the energy part with great seriousness so that we can get our industry to dare to transition. The member surely knows very well, just as I do, that what the industry is worried about is this – if one is to dare to phase out the fossil and transition to electricity. Where will this electricity come from? Can it be trusted that the electricity will come, and can it be trusted that it is there where it is needed and when it is needed, at the right price?
These are questions that will be completely decisive for Sweden's climate policy moving forward and which the climate action plan handles to the highest extent. The plan contains 70 different concrete policy proposals that we are presenting now during this mandate period and which we will begin during these four years.
Of course, it is a long-term question how we are to manage to have a policy that reaches all the way down to zero in the longer term. We raise this, not least because the energy system, in our view, is so important. If one is to seriously dare to replace the fossil with electricity and not just mix biofuels into the cars' internal combustion engines, the electricity must be there. Even the cars must be there, and they are also produced with electricity.
We therefore need much more electricity to manage the climate transition, and this is the core of our climate action plan. It contains, as mentioned, 70 different concrete proposals that are started or implemented during this mandate period, so I do not think it is a plan about a plan.
I am very satisfied with the climate action plan, but I always have my ears open for discussion and development of all the spaces that exist for Sweden to constantly improve its climate policy. I hope that the Social Democrats are also part of this lively debate.
Joakim Järrebring (S)
Madam Speaker! I believe that my interpellation on transparency is supported by the criticism I am presenting. Much of the communication that the government and the minister himself have put forward regarding the climate action plan gives the impression that we now have an action plan with measures that take us all the way to net zero when, de facto, in order for us to manage to replace the emission reductions we received through the reduction obligation, a much larger reform needs to be put in place - which as of yet does not exist but is to be investigated.
I think it is worth discussing this issue of transparency, even though it is quite true as the Minister says that the underlying documents existed and could be released and that one could see how things actually stood. But I believe there were many besides me who had truly hoped that the government would come forward with an action plan with measures that would enable us to meet both our own environmental goals, the commitments we have according to the Paris Agreement, and our EU commitments.
Right now, it looks like we will not meet our 2030 goals and neither will the EU's goals for 2030, but it is very much a plan of a plan - a hope that in the future we will get measures in place that will ensure we manage the transition. It is not this government that is going to do it, but someone else, some other time.
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Member Järrebring, for a good discussion on the climate action plan and on transparency!
We completely agree that transparency is important and that the Government Offices follow all existing rules and laws and release all calculations and underlying documents that we have to release.
There is no reason to lack transparency in this, but there are, on the other hand, reasons to be clear. The climate crisis is not solved yet, and the previous government's plan to reach one of the climate goals - not all - was a 60 percent reduction obligation, something that the party that Joakim Järrebring now represents has backed away from and which, as far as I hear, no parties any longer stand for.
It is, therefore, still a complex issue, and it is important that we do it properly. I hope that we can build greater unity and less polarization in the climate issue so that we achieve more stability and avoid situations like those we had during the 2022 election, where all parties except one - Miljöpartiet - went to the election on a platform to change the policy that resulted in reaching a short-term goal. Everyone, therefore, wanted to lower fuel prices.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.