Response to interpellation 2024/25:2 on climate goals in agreements
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns Sweden's climate policy and whether the government's focus on certain goals is correct. L believes that Sweden pursues an ambitious climate policy with a focus on cost-effective instruments at the EU level 1. L argues that the net-zero goal by 2045 and the ESR goal by 2030 are highlighted because the EU regulates climate policy 1 2. L emphasizes that the focus should be on conditions such as electricity, infrastructure, and permit processes 2. L opposes the image that nothing has been done for agriculture and argues that the transport sector is Sweden's greatest potential. MP argues that the government ignores goals 3 and that Sweden risks breaking the Paris Agreement 4. MP believes that the government focuses too much on industry and lacks proposals for agriculture and the transport sector 5.
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)
Mr. Speaker! Elin Söderberg has asked me what reasons underlie my decision to include only the net-zero target for 2045 and the ESR target for 2030 in the agreements between the Tidö parties.
Sweden is pursuing an ambitious and effective climate policy to reach the climate goals. The Government is determined that Sweden shall fulfill its part of the EU's climate goals and reach all the way down to net-zero emissions by 2045 at the latest.
The EU's climate policy has, through the European Green Deal, established the broad framework for Sweden's climate transition. The EU's legislative package, Fit for 55, steers towards rapidly reduced emissions by 2030. That the EU is now acting so powerfully against the climate crisis means that Sweden's climate policy is regulated to a greater extent at the EU level.
The Environmental Goals Commission will therefore be tasked with reviewing the design of our national interim targets for 2030 so that they better align with Sweden's commitments within the EU. The Commission will also review the interim target for domestic transport. The interim targets are important checkpoints to reach all the way down to net-zero emissions by 2045 at the latest and net-negative thereafter.
The Government considers that the focus in the upcoming framework within the EU should be directed towards cost-effective instruments such as emissions trading and that national measures should primarily focus on creating the right conditions for the transition.
Last week, the government submitted the budget bill for 2025 to the Riksdag. Taken together, the collective proposals in the budget mean that the ESR commitment for 2030 is expected to be met. However, there are uncertainties linked to fuel use and developments in the LULUCF sector.
The Government also intends to appoint a broad inquiry with the aim of designing policy measures that can contribute to Sweden's EU commitments being met in a cost-effective and socio-economically efficient manner, while at the same time avoiding unreasonably high costs for households and businesses.
Fundamentally, it is about electricity and power being available in sufficient quantities, about streamlining permit processes, about infrastructure for both CCS and bio-CCS as well as electric cars, and about ensuring that the competence for the transition exists. The Government has taken large steps to expand our fossil-free electricity production to achieve an electrification of society, for example with new nuclear power and proposals for increased incentives for municipalities to contribute to more land-based wind power.
The government's starting point for climate policy is to implement cost-effective measures with the greatest effect for concrete emission reductions. Climate policy shall safeguard the competitiveness of companies and the economy of households, and it shall be fair and based on a broad acceptance among the Swedish population.
Elin Söderberg (MP)
Mr. Speaker! The Minister for Climate and the Environment does not answer my question, which was what reasons underlie the fact that the Minister has chosen to only include one of our national climate goals - the goal for 2045 - and one of our EU commitments - the ESR goal for 2030 - in agreements with the Tidö parties.
It is not for anyone to choose which legislations they shall follow and which they shall not. All established climate goals for Sweden apply. Despite this, the government has chosen to work towards only one of our national climate goals and one of our EU commitments.
The climate goals are interconnected, and there are reasons why Sweden has the climate goals that we have. If our national climate goal for the transport sector is not met, it means that emissions from agriculture must be reduced much more significantly for us to reach our binding EU goal for the ESR sector, for example. If the national goal for the transport sector is met instead, the conditions for reaching all other climate goals look much better.
If the Tidö parties had worked to achieve the national goals - 70 percent lower emissions from the transport sector by 2030, 63 percent lower emissions from the ESR sector by 2030 and 75 percent lower emissions by 2040 - Sweden's conditions for reaching our binding climate goals within the EU, both for the ESR sector and for forest and land within the LULUCF goal, would have looked better. We would also have been on a much better course for the upcoming EU goal for 2040.
The national climate goals were adopted in 2017. The Liberals, Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Sweden Democrats have therefore had seven years to develop policies to reach these goals, but instead, they have chosen not to follow them. Minister Pourmokhtari and Finance Minister Svantesson chose instead to stand at a press conference and state that they want to use all the space that the industry's hard work has led to and all the surplus that the Green Party's policy has created for the years 2021-2023 in the ESR sector to make up for their own climate failure.
What one chose not to tell is that the entire surplus in the ESR sector, which exists thanks to the Green Party's policy, will be used to cover a likely very large deficit in the LULUCF sector for the period 2021-2025. The government therefore does not have this surplus to play with.
The climate goals are interconnected, and it is not possible to choose to follow some rules and ignore others. Therefore, I ask again: What reasons underlie the fact that the Minister for Climate and Environment only focuses on one of our national goals and one of our EU commitments?
Mr. Speaker! I also want the Minister for Climate and Environment to answer how the government intends to act to handle the fact that the deficit in the LULUCF sector, i.e., the carbon sequestration in forest and land, for the period 2021-2025 will automatically be transferred to the ESR target, which will therefore not be met.
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! Member Söderberg has asked me what reasons underlie my decision to include the net-zero target for 2045 and the ESR commitment for 2030 in my agreement with the other Tidö parties in what we call Tidö climate.
The answer to the question is that the reasons underlying why this has been done - that we are raising Sweden's climate goal of net zero by 2045 at the latest and the ESR commitment to 2030 - is that the EU is now acting so powerfully against the climate crisis that Sweden's climate policy is regulated to a greater extent at the EU level.
This means that the government considers that the focus in the upcoming framework within the EU should be directed towards cost-effective instruments, for example, emission trading, and that national measures in Sweden - Sweden's national climate policy - need to focus on creating conditions for climate transition.
There is no one who can be whipped into producing clean steel by law if there is no electricity for the clean steel. There is no climate-friendly business that will be able to conduct a clean operation without a permit to conduct its operation or without an efficient permit process. There is no one in our entire elongated country who can drive an electric car if the charging infrastructure is not there and reliable, and there is no municipality and no company in our entire society that can recruit people without the competence being available on-site by the government having developed such a thing as battery education at our universities.
This is what the government means we need to discuss when it comes to Sweden's national climate policy. We can stand here and have figure bingo about different goals for as many months as we want. I will certainly have several debates with the members of the Green Party, who are so incredibly interested in exactly these goals.
We have 16 national environmental quality objectives in Sweden. In addition to those, we have various climate goals concerning our national climate work. We have ESR commitments to 2030, domestic transport goals, interim goals to 2040, 2045 goals, and thereafter net zero. Then we have additional goals in the EU. We have the LULUCF, ESR, and ETS work. It is a very extensive goal-setting work that has been carried out. It is very good – well-worked, not least by Miljöpartiet!
But we also need to discuss how we reach those goals, and that is where it de facto also becomes politics. We can talk about the goals, and then I can be even clearer and focus even more on the fact that the government chooses to elevate these two goals in our agreement with the other Tidö parties because we see that it is a focus on preconditions that needs to form the basis for the national climate work. At the EU level, very powerful steps are currently being taken with various instruments that are very cost-effective, not least emissions trading.
Shall we discuss the historical description, Mr. Speaker, I can point out that when we made decisions on national goals in Sweden, I, among others as a representative for the Liberals – I had not yet become a member of Parliament – actively engaged in emissions trading at the EU level. We must have cost-effective instruments that are regulated jointly in the EU, because we have an internal market. If companies are to have stable conditions to work under, it is good if we do this at the EU level.
We can stand and have a discussion about all the different goals that Sweden shall work towards, about which ones should be in focus, about how we should handle any deficits in LULUCF compared to surpluses in ESR, and about how the ETS-flex towards ESR should be handled, but I do not think that the Swedish people care about that. The Swedish people do, however, care extremely much about how we are to give our entire long country the conditions to succeed with the climate transition, and then the answer to the questions is competence, infrastructure, permit processes, and electricity.
Elin Söderberg (MP)
Mr. Speaker! I would, of course, very gladly discuss the implementation policy itself. The Green Party has presented a solid climate action plan as an alternative to the memorandum the government submitted, and it concerns precisely permit processes, competence supply, charging infrastructure, and so on.
What this debate is about, however, is the management of the goals. The Minister for Climate and Environment stood at a press conference and wanted to let it appear that the ESR goal is being reached. Follow-up questions came from journalists, which demonstrated that the commitments for forest and land are not being met and thus that there is no policy for us to reach our binding goals within the EU. The minister then responded that the 2045 goal and the ESR goal have been included in a Tidö Agreement and that she therefore did not want to answer how the LULUCF sector is being managed.
Sweden has two binding climate targets within the EU by 2030 that are linked. One is the ESR target. The other is the target for increased carbon sequestration in forest and land, the LULUCF target. In addition to this, the territorial emissions that are not included in the ESR target are part of the EU's emissions trading, ETS. There is flexibility between them for the case where it is somewhat easier to reach one part compared to the other. Collectively, however, all targets must be met for Sweden to live up to its commitments within the EU as part of the EU's commitments under the Paris Agreement. If we in Sweden breach our commitments in the EU, we are therefore breaching the Paris Agreement.
The IPCC states that the world's collective commitments under the Paris Agreement are currently insufficient to limit global warming to two degrees. A breach of our commitments is therefore extremely serious. The Swedish people care about whether we can create policies that protect the population from the most serious risks of climate change. That is why these goals are relevant.
Simplified, ETS covers industry's emissions, ESR covers agriculture's and the transport sector's emissions, and LULUCF covers the forest's emissions and uptake. As it stands now, it looks good with ETS for Sweden. When it comes to the ESR goal, it looked good when Romina Pourmokhtari took over the position of Minister for Climate and Environment. Since then, the government has shock-increased the emissions so that Sweden is no longer expected to reach that goal.
Regarding the LULUCF target, however, it does not look good at all. In recent years, the uptake has decreased instead of increased. Harvesting levels are at record highs. The forest has also been affected by drought as a result of climate change, so it has grown worse. The development indicates that the trend will not reverse in the coming years.
The LULUCF target is divided into two parts for different time periods: one part for the period 2021-2025 and one part for the period after 2025. For the period 2021-2025, Sweden has a total deficit in forest land against the EU commitment of 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. For cultivated arable land and cultivated pasture land, Sweden is calculated to book a deficit of 1.7 and 0.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, respectively. In total, there is therefore a calculated deficit of 13.4 million tonnes, which can be compared to the fact that Sweden's entire transport sector emits 13.75 million tonnes in a year.
There are uncertainties regarding reference levels, but the situation looks very bad. This deficit for the period 2021-2025 will automatically be carried over to the ESR target and consume the entire surplus that Miljöpartiet's policy led to and which is at 8.6 million tons for 2021-2023.
I want to repeat the question: How does the Minister intend to act to handle the fact that the deficit in the LULUCF sector for 2021-2025 will automatically be transferred to the ESR target, which will therefore not be met?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! I point out once again that we are here in an interpellation debate concerning the reasons that underlie why the government has chosen to include the ESR target for 2030 and Sweden's climate goal of net zero by 2045 in our Tidö Agreement. We are not here in an interpellation debate about the LULUCF sector.
But I would very much like to discuss the LULUCF sector, and we can perhaps start by discussing what the deficit looked like under previous governments. Is this an environmental goal that Sweden was on track to reach easily before the awful right-wing government came and ruined everything? Or is it perhaps the case that Sweden has a very large forestry industry and, together with Finland, a unique LULUCF commitment that makes it a cross-party parliamentary challenge how we are to manage Swedish forest policy? It would be fantastic if Miljöpartiet could devote itself to that type of description of this rather large issue instead of portraying it in the way that is chosen to do today.
But absolutely - let us entertain ourselves with a bit of goal-bingo, because what seems to be in focus for this debate is not how we are to reach climate goals, but which goals exist and how these goals function, Mr. Speaker. The member says that the government focuses on two of the goals, but that we are not supposed to do so according to law, but must focus on all goals.
I can confirm that the government follows the framework and all the grounds that have been laid. We have a huge amount of national goals that the government works to achieve. We write in our budget how we stand in relation to all these different national goals.
The reason why the government chooses to specifically highlight Sweden's net-zero goal for 2045 and the ESR goal for 2030 is quite simply that we see the EU acting very forcefully against the climate crisis with various goals and effective policy instruments, such as emissions trading and a jointly regulated policy to reduce emissions from aviation. It affects what we conduct for national policy, Mr. Speaker.
This government chooses to put the gunpowder where it needs to be placed. We ensure that the electricity is available for the climate transition, both from wind power and from nuclear power. We ensure that the permit processes do not take years and thereby slow down and put spokes in the wheels of the transition that the business community is so hungry to realize. We ensure that all the competence required for the climate transition is available in our entire elongated country, in every municipality that needs to hire someone who will work with climate adaptation measures or transition. We also ensure that the infrastructure works. We do this through historical investments, not least in railway and road infrastructure but also in, for example, charging infrastructure and infrastructure for CCS.
That is how the foundation for the national climate policy is laid. It certainly sounds more ambitious with the Green Party's focus on which goals should exist. If it had been a competition over who set the most goals, the Green Party would have won by a landslide. But if one discusses what should form the basis for the transition to work, it is about things such as base load and capacity. What can we provide the industry when it wants to remove the fossil and bring in the electric-driven and truly electrify?
I naturally have to stand here and speak about goals. We can talk about how the ESR sector's goal fulfillment looks, or how our 16 environmental quality goals look. But it is even more important to discuss the policy that shall form the basis for the goal fulfillment. That is what the government considers, in any case.
We are very positive that we are now together in the EU taking a proper grip, not least on emissions trading, to reduce Europe's emissions.
Elin Söderberg (MP)
Mr. Speaker! I am concerned because the Minister is once again focusing on measures that to a very large extent aim to support the industry's climate transition. It is infrastructure, permit processes, expansion of electricity production and so on. These are very important measures. Miljöpartiet has a long series of reforms to move much faster forward.
The ETS sector is, as I previously mentioned, the sector where things currently look quite good. The investment plans are still stuck in the industrial sector. But we have areas where it looks very difficult to reach the goals, such as within the transport sector in Sweden.
The government has not presented any proposals within the agricultural sector. Regarding increased carbon sequestration in forest and land, there is a deficit of over 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents for the period 2021-2025.
The development does not look to be heading in the right direction if we look ahead. Therefore, it becomes central which goals the government has chosen to focus on and thus the reform proposals and action proposals that are being developed to manage the emissions.
What we see is that the government has placed the focus on the 2045 goal. They present measures linked to the industry's transition. Those we can absolutely discuss, and there are differences. But it is very empty when it comes to measures to increase carbon sequestration in forest and land and to reduce emissions within the transport sector so that we reach our ESR commitment. This applies to both the national commitment and our binding commitment towards the EU.
That is why it is relevant to ask questions about what underlies the focus that the government has. It affects what policy the government presents. The policy that the government presents leads to us not reaching the goals. Thus, we exacerbate global warming and the effects for Sweden's population.
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! I note that the member chooses not to mention what the potential to meet LULUCF commitments looked like under previous governments. It is a matter of whether it is this government that has influenced the large deficits that exist in the LULUCF commitments, or if it actually concerns reduced forest growth, climate change, invasive species, and a uniquely high commitment placed on Sweden that makes it a difficult issue.
This is a question that all parties are currently handling in a parliamentary inquiry and that they are looking at how to manage. It would have been a more desirable debate to talk about it, if it were the case that the interpellation had been about LULUCF, which it is not. The question I have received is: Why does the government choose to highlight the ESR sector and Sweden's climate goal for net zero in 2045?
Mr. Speaker! The Member also chose to say that the government has done nothing to reduce emissions from agriculture. I want to clearly oppose that picture by pointing out a new initiative that the government has taken and announced in our budget for 2025, which is called Kväveklivet.
I think Miljöpartiet might feel some joy that I am building on names that previous governments came up with, such as Industriklivet and Klimatklivet. We have now announced Kväveklivet, where 100 million will be available annually for support in the coming years. This could, for example, involve various modernizations of tools used that can reduce fertilizer use, make it more efficient, and in that way reduce emissions for agriculture. One can carry out various measures that reduce ammonia emissions.
Very active work is underway to ensure that agriculture also contributes its share. But it is clear that fundamentally, it is about the transport issue. Sweden's greatest potential lies in the transport issue. The Government is working very actively to reduce emissions from the transport sector with a new reduction obligation including electricity, but also with the electrification that is taking place on a broad front, not least through our new electric car premium, which was also announced in the Government Bill.
Very active work is underway. I look forward to discussing it further with Miljöpartiet.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.