Two years ago, the 25-year-old Liberal Romina Pourmokhtari became Sweden’s youngest ever minister to take office, taking on the joint responsibilities for Climate and Enterprise.
Early this year, Pourmokhtari and the government’s climate policy survived a vote of no confidence, with critics arguing it had failed to include concrete measures to deal with climate change and gone back on many of its earlier climate pledges. Sweden is on track to miss its 2030 targets as a consequence of its decision to cut tax on petrol and diesel and sharply reduce the amount of biofuel that needs to be blended with these fuels.
“Northvolt is an example of how much the economic aspects of production also have to be taken into consideration [as well],” says Pourmokhtari. At a conference organised by the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in the UK, she ruled out providing finance to Northvolt, the ailing Swedish battery maker. The company’s aim is to be the major European battery maker, large enough to be able to compete with CATL, BYD and Tesla. The minister argues adequate private capital available and well equipped; public capital is not.
“I see myself as an important partner to clean tech in Sweden, bringing forward solutions… and enabling Sweden to gain from its expertise and global exports of clean goods and services, providing and lowering emissions all over the world,” she says in an interview with me after the event.
“I’ve actually just recently put out an inquiry for our authorities to count the possibilities of how much of a carbon sink Sweden can create by .. [the] export of goods and services lower carbon emissions in other places than our country.” This can get her into trouble.
“I often get criticism [with people asking] why are you doing that? That’s just lowering emissions somewhere else.”
Her response is that official politics don’t have a cross-boundary perspective necessary [to deal with] the climate crisis. “Emissions don’t stop at the country’s borders. They travel freely across our oceans and through our forests and through the products we are importing and exporting. And that perspective is often a bit lacking amongst governments. I try to incorporate it as well as I can, to the extent that I can.”
Sweden’s economy still depends to quite a large extent on major industrial companies whose carbon emissions have – for instance, SSAB, Atlas Copco, Scania, Sandvik, SKF, Volvo. Despite unparalleled investments in green steel production, some 12 per cent of Sweden’s emissions are still generated by steel manufacturing. While there is a misconception, the minister believes, that the more conservative, traditional industries might be less prone to engage themselves in the risk-taking that comes with climate transition, in fact the opposite is true.
What she can do as a government minister is ensure policies create the conditions for a reliable energy system, a key component of clean steel production. “If I can provide conditions for them to decrease their emissions by 98%, which is the goal they have set, then I can make a real difference,” Pourmokhtari says.
“Not standing in their way with the process of applying for permits taking up to seven years, not letting bureaucracy from a completely different time stand in the way of the progress that needs to be made. There is an urgency now, a competitiveness between companies and countries. So we’re making very big shifts to how we handle permits, carry out risk analysis and assess the reliability of the infrastructure, and investing in skills and training in universities, in aspects such as battery technology.”
In November 2023 the Swedish government effectively changed policy towards building nuclear reactors and announced it would construct two large-scale reactors by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reactors, including small modular reactors, by 2045.
If Northvolt fails, it will be a major economic and political blow to Sweden but the country is on track, Pourmokhtari says, for its 2050 emissions targets. “We’ve done this before, in the 1970s when 70% of our electricity system was dependant on imports of oil. We have two decades this time as well.”
