Why Sweden is light-years ahead on climate

If you're looking for a climate success story, you'll find it, of course, in Scandinavia. Sweden has cut 80% of its net emissions since 1990 – while growing its economy. How have they done it? And can this be a blueprint for other countries?

#planeta #sweden #decarbonization

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

Credits:
Reporter: Anne-Sophie Brändlin
Video Editor: Neven Hillebrands
Supervising Editor: Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann / Kiyo Dörrer / Michael Trobridge
Fact-Check: Kirsten Funck
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Special thanks to: Lars Zetterberg (Swedish Environmental Research Institute) and Gustav Ebenå (Swedish Energy Agency) for insightful background interviews.

Read more:
Sweden's climate goals:

Sweden's heating sector:

Sweden's carbon tax:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:58 Cleaning up electricity
03:22 Fossil-free heat
05:42 Sweden's carbon tax
08:45 What's left?
11:08 Lessons learned

[DWPlanetA]

How does your country stack up against Sweden's progress?

[AtulBhatia]

Basically, there’s a sense of “we are in this together” altruism. Wish we could have the same attitude here in India

[heronimousbrapson]

Canada could follow Sweden's example but won't. We have a powerful fossil fuel industry which has a stranglehold on our governments.

[tedforsstromjacobsson]

While almost all of this information is factual, you are omitting or just missing some key points. As a Swede it’s always been incredibly clear to me, even from childhood, that we put in a lot of great work as a nation even before I was born, and throughout my life. The keys were that the government pushed for stuff that would just make it safer and cheaper to live here and business got behind it. All good and well.

Today however we have had leadership, from most political parties, for a couple decades, that has been too scared to push for real change and is instead great at shuffling numbers. Most national experts show how we’ve failed miserably in rail (both passenger and cargo), forestry (monoculture, biodiversity loss, inflated carbon capture), and more. Plus we have huge companies that have production and other parts of their business outside of Sweden. That means the emissions can be huge and still not count as being Swedish.

Our current government actually shut down the department of environment after like half a century. And many global and local environmental groups have shown very clearly how our current leadership are mostly purposely missing the target and failing to address crises, because private interests and economic growth comes first.

We’re a nation that has done a lot well in this arena. But to highlight Sweden now, when we’re doing our worst job in decades, feels very strange to me as a Swede.

[AdamfromBristol]

This proves that decarbonisation isn't a drain on the economy. Edit: I understand it's easier for rich countries to decarbonise, but the point is it didn't cost Sweden it's economic growth.

[wertywerrtyson]

You wouldn’t think it’s going this good listening to the news in Sweden. All we hear is how the government is failing the environment and more needs to be done.

[theprinceofawesomeness]

i'm swedish and my dad says "why should we continue and be this good when the rest of the world don't try", i remind him that this is a part of the Swedish pride that we punch above our weight class, for all of history swden have always been punching above it's weight class which beggs the question "why can't countries that's more well of do the same" (USA and other Europe countries)

[frederickwallis]

Love the optimism. As an Australian though I did snort at their claim to be a country of great distances.

[boathemian]

I’ve been to Sweden lots of times, it’s an amazing place with high standards of life

[petter]

Swedish people has always been innovative and hard working👍🏻

[MagusMik]

Once again proving investing in advancements in energy and infrastructure is worth it and is always a net positive.

[thgughy]

Basically: less greedy and less corrupted government, when compared to most Europe..

[Nubbe]

The biggest and most important decisions were made in the 70 and 80-tis. It's not like Sweden is on track with its goals today. It will miss the European 2030 goal for example while other countries in Europe will succeed.

[duckente]

do basically a science-based long term policies from a government that cares about it's people and future generations (which is basically a lottery chance for any non-nordic countries)

[markiliff]

So the learning point here is: start 50 years ago.

[danielblum]

Could you please make a video like this on the climate change reality of Argentina? I'm an environmental scientist and climate change and carbon markets expert from Argentina. Would love to see more content on the global south!

My dad was part of the team that first came up with the carbon tax and the road taxes of the big cities (trängselavgift). In both cases, the original plan was to use those funds to fund environmentally friendly things, like railway and public transport. Neither happened. Usually it went to building roads and to give tax breaks to the industrial sector.

[lolinonusos]

Nice video, here is some more big problems we have in sweden:
1. Only 9% of the 70% forest is actually protected.
2. They are voting against the passage of som really important EU-laws, like the nature-restoration-law.
3. We still emit 8 times more co2 than what the paris-agreement says we should.
4. Our big banks still invests their monney into co2-monsters. The financed emissions is about 76 million tons of co2 per year, which is more than everyone in sweden emits combined.

[cristianc]

They said that we in Sweden produce clean energy and it’s all good. What they don’t mention is that the energy price has gone through the roof. Especially in southern Sweden. We’ve had days in the winter where they’ve warned about energy shortages and with possibly shutting down electricity for some areas (didn’t occur though). Because of the energy shortage in winter time we’ve had to start up some oil burning plants to meet the demand for energy and sometimes even import energy from other countries that burn coal and oil.

Sweden has done a lot of good when it comes to the environment, but it’s not all good and a lot of people are struggling with paying their electricity bills.

[Merecir]

Sweden is ahead on climate policies because it built lots of nuclear in the 70's and 80's.
But now it is falling behind again because the greens forced the previous red govt to shut down several reactors for no sensible reason.