Sweden Takes Another Step Toward Freedom From Fossil Fuels
Credit to Author: Zachary Shahan| Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 03:00:35 +0000
Published on February 3rd, 2020 | by Zachary Shahan
February 3rd, 2020 by Zachary Shahan
Gasoline and diesel vehicle bans became all the rage for a while a few years ago. One country after another announced plans or potential plans to stop selling fossil fuel vehicles by a certain year — 2030, 2040, 2050. (For some reason, no one picked a year that wasn’t a multiple of 10 except for Scotland, which plans a phaseout by 2032.) Some cities and states followed along — Paris and California, for example.
However, I haven’t heard much if anything about such bans for a long time. After that wave of announcements, I haven’t seen other major economies jump on board with such plans and I haven’t seen notable updates from the initial trendsetters and first followers. Well, until a news I saw this weekend out of Sweden.
Sweden now has a commission in place to work through the idea. The commission will decide on the year by which a full phaseout seems best. The commission must submit plans for the policy proposal in the coming year — by February 1, 2021. The chair of the commission is Sven Hunhammar, Director of Sustainability and Environment at the Swedish Transport Administration.
How ambitious will Sweden be? It seems the expectation is pretty high. “Sweden will be the world’s first fossil-free welfare nation,” says Minister for Financial Markets and Housing Per Bolund. “The transport sector is responsible for a third of Sweden’s emissions of greenhouse gases, and thus has a significant role to play in the climate transition.”
From the government of Sweden, here is exactly what the commission is supposed to do in the coming year:
Hopefully Sweden’s detailed progress in this regard will help the UK, France, India, Scotland, China, the Netherlands, Norway, and others to plan and implement their own gas car bans. And for the countries that are ahead of Sweden on such planning, I presume they will be critical advisors to the Scandinavian country.
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Zachary Shahan is tryin’ to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort on Tesla or any other company.