"What we are seeing is the beginning of a new green industrial revolution"

Svemin was one of the first industries to launch its updated Climate Roadmap. On Wednesday, it was time to hand over this year’s combined follow-up report to the Minister for Energy, Business and Industry, Ebba Busch, together with the other 21 business sectors within Fossil Free Sweden.

Since the first roadmaps for fossil-free competitiveness were launched in 2018, major steps have been taken by both business and politics to reach the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. The rapid technological development and the growing demand for fossil-free products and services have contributed.

This year’s follow-up report (Swe.) was received by Energy and Industry Minister Ebba Busch, who promised that Sweden’s climate and environmental policy will continue to be ambitious.

– But no one does the job better than the industry, that’s where the innovations come from, Ebba Busch told a packed Berns in Stockholm.

The follow-up report contains both examples of Swedish companies that have made substantial progress, as well as prioritized proposals on how the policy should remove obstacles for the business world.

– What we are seeing is the beginning of a new green industrial revolution. But the rapid development would never have happened without business leaders at the forefront and cooperation between the state and business. If someone had claimed what is happening today five years ago, it would have been dismissed as naive green dreams, says Svante Axelsson, national coordinator, Fossil Free Sweden.

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It is no coincidence that the mining and mineral industry was early on with its updated roadmap within the framework of Fossil Free Sweden* The development in the industry is extremely strong and has gone faster than the forecasts of just a couple of years ago. The products from the mining and mineral industry also form the start of many supporting value chains. A restructuring of the mining and mineral industry is therefore a prerequisite for subsequent stages to be able to become climate neutral.

Metals and minerals are also absolutely necessary to produce the climate technologies needed for the green social transition. The climate transition is the single most important driving force for increased demand for many metals.

– In Sweden, we have excellent conditions for producing the metals and minerals needed for the wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars and batteries, all of which require metals to a greater degree than in the conventional technologies used in the past. In addition, we can produce these metals with a 60 to 90 percent lower climate footprint than elsewhere in the world, says Hanna Stenegren, climate and energy expert at Svemin.

In order to reach the mining and mineral industry’s 2035 climate goal of fossil-free mining and the 2045 goal of climate-neutral processes and fossil-free energy use, a lot of electricity is required. The industry will go from using 5 TWh of electricity today to 74 TWh in 2045.

– Access to secure supply of fossil-free electricity at a competitive cost will be absolutely decisive for the large investments that the industry is now making in the climate transition as we move towards becoming Sweden’s largest electricity user, says Hanna Stenegren.

*Svemin’s updated Climate Roadmap is currently only available in Swedish. An English version is under development and will be presented in due course. The 2022 follow-up report from Fossil Free Sweden is also only available in Swedish at the moment.

Facts

Within the framework of the government initiative Fossil-free Sweden, 22 business sectors have since 2018 presented their own roadmaps for fossil-free competitiveness. There, the industries show how they can become fossil-free or climate-neutral by 2045 at the latest and what is required from a political point of view to make it possible. Roadmap for a competitive and fossil-free mining and mineral industry (Svemin’s Climate Roadmap) is part of, and financed by, Swedish Mining Innovation, the strategic innovation program for the Swedish mining and metal extracting industry, which is a joint venture of Vinnova, Formas and the Swedish Energy Agency.