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Authorities: shipping needs incentives

09 March 2020

Policies and incentives are too few to reduce the climate impact of shipping.  According to a control study of the strategic plan that will make the Swedish traffic sector fossil-free the government must come up with new ones.

The transition of the transport sector is too slow for Sweden to reach the target of at least 70 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2030. This is stated by the Swedish Energy Agency, the National board of housing, building and planning, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Transport Analysis and the Swedish Transport Agency in the joint report Kontrollstation för Strategisk plan för omställning av transportsektorn till fossilfrihet.

In total the emissions have decreased by 19 percent since 2010, but that is not enough. Among the four types of traffic, road traffic has reduced its emissions by 21 percent, while both domestic flights and shipping have increased their emissions by nine percent each. For shipping, this means that emissions have increased by 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in eight years.

The investigation therefore recommends that “the government sets up an inquiry and then introduces new incentives to promote shipping's conversion to fossil fuels. The investigation should take a holistic approach and raise several different perspectives on how investments in vessels that reduce the climate impact of vessels can be promoted. In all the alternatives, it should also be investigated how the industry itself can contribute. The coordination authorities believe that this study should also shed light on how Sweden can promote increased use of renewable fuels, increased accessibility and use of infrastructure for renewable fuels and increased energy efficiency.”

The proposal is one of seven that the coordination authorities recommend should be implemented as soon as possible in order to speed up the transition of the transportsytem. The other proposals include a review of the carbon dioxide tax, a study on long-term taxation in the transport sector and one on investment support for increased production of renewable fuels.

Read the report (in swedish)


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