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1 The development of the Swedish carbon tax 1991-2019. Source: Criqui et al. 2019; reproduced with permission by its authors. Note: For 1991-1993, the industrial carbon tax level represents an average estimate, as the deductions for industries were provided on a complex case-by-case basis (for details, see e.g. Sterner 1994) until being replaced by a general discount for energy-intensive industries in 1994. Currency conversion based on an exchange rate of SEK 10.33 per EUR.
Source publication
The Swedish carbon tax of 1991, one of the first of its kind, has positioned Sweden as a forerunner in climate governance. It is often depicted an international success and today constitutes the backbone of Swedish climate policy. At first, however, the tax received widespread criticism and had limited political support. The policy design process w...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... limited time span influenced the work process of the commission. The task to prepare a proposal was delegated to a secretariat, quickly assembled within the Ministry of Environment and Energy, composed of policy officials with competence in energy, environmental, and legal issues (Interviews 1a, 3a, 5; Engström 2020). Working intensively over the summer-even taking a working holiday together, accompanied by their families-the secretariat developed its proposal in a period within a mere three months (Interviews 4, 5; Engström 2020). ...
Context 2
... by harmonization to EU rules, the government lowered the discount for industry from 75 to 50 per cent of the tax level (Government Bill 1996), a change entering into force in 1997. It implied a doubling of the carbon price for industry (see Figure 12.1). The second major redesign feature over the years has been the eco-tax reform. ...
Context 3
... influenced the government to argue for the carbon tax being the chief climate policy instrument (Government Bill 2009), de facto embracing the success narrative around the tax. In fact, they raised the tax even further in the coming years (see Figure 12.1). ...
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This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to wh...
Citations
... Sweden's carbon tax design was influenced by two primary objectives: addressing climate change and reforming the tax system. The tax aimed to stabilize Swedish carbon emissions, aligning with the 1988 stabilization target, and to replace other taxes, such as income and payroll taxes, with environmental levies (Hildingsson & Knaggård, 2022). According to Jonsson et al. (2020) Green-tax switch. ...
... The tax also played a pivotal role in promoting renewable energy sources, such as biomass, and encouraging energy-efficient technologies. Economically, Sweden experienced steady GDP growth, with GDP per capita increasing in real terms by more than 50% between 1990 and 2019 (Hildingsson & Knaggård, 2022). Furthermore, the public acceptance of the carbon tax remained relatively high, attributed to the transparent allocation of tax revenues to environmental initiatives and the reduction of other taxes. ...
Climate change remains a pressing global issue, necessitating innovative fiscal policies to mitigate its impact. Green taxation, first conceptualized by Pigou in the 20th century, has emerged as a pivotal tool in encouraging sustainable practices while penalizing environmental degradation. This study examines the implementation of green tax policies in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, highlighting their success in reducing emissions and fostering renewable energy adoption. Drawing lessons from these Scandinavian models, the research explores how Indonesia can tailor similar strategies to strengthen its green taxation framework. By adopting a comparative case study approach, this paper identifies critical success factors, including gradual implementation, public acceptance, and balancing economic and environmental goals. The findings aim to inform Indonesia's policymaking, enabling the alignment of fiscal policies with sustainable development objectives.
... Over time, ideas of ecological modernisation (Mol and Spaargaren 2000) have fostered a predominant understanding, emphasising a win-win between environmental measures, industrial renewal and job creation. This has also applied to climate governance, as manifested in broad support for a carbon tax introduced already in 1991 (Hildingsson and Knaggård 2022), an energy transition towards renewable sources (Bäckstrand and Kronsell 2015), the recent climate policy framework (Karlsson 2021), and efforts aimed at industrial decarbonization . ...
Climate policies are challenged around the world, a development coinciding with the backlash of globalisation. The emergence of the modern welfare state, however, indicates that similar tensions may give rise to transformative change, if coinciding interests for change develop. This article explores the case of Sweden, critical due to its longstanding role as an environmental frontrunner, now experiencing climate policy rollback. Based on 31 in-depth interviews, we analyse perceptions on a just transformation among business, trade union and civil society actors. The analysis reveals new and coinciding interests, driven by desire to restore climate leadership, and includes financial reform, more active state interventions and new policy tools to ensure public legitimacy. Views diverge on the depth of a just transformation, and power relations are different compared to the emergence of the welfare state. Nevertheless, a green Swedish model can be discerned, forging enhanced climate mitigation and renewed welfare state arrangements.
... In Sweden, a country where incremental -but too slow -territorial emission reductions have followed economic growth since the 1990s, there was for a long time a consensus among the parliamentary parties that climate change was a serious issue, and that Sweden should be a forerunner. The carbon tax, for example, introduced in 1991, was the result of a compromise that would lead to emission reductions without threatening industry (Hildingsson and Knaggård 2022). While there were neoliberal think-tanks pushing anti-environmentalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and in the late 00s a couple of climate denialist networks were formed, they did not get much traction among the established parties (Ekberg and Pressfeldt 2022;Anshelm and Hultman 2014a). ...
... This limited the space available for vigorous anti-environmentalism, but also for more radical green movements urging a transformative agenda (Hultman 2015). The carbon tax implemented in 1991, which was seen as a compromise between keeping nuclear power and limiting fossil fuels, was also seen as a policy success that showed how the market could be used to implement reform while not putting a too heavy burden on industry (Hildingsson and Knaggård 2022). ...
The fossil fuel industry has a long history of spreading disinformation about climate change science and obstructing mitigating policies. During the 2010s and 2020s, these vested interests have found a political ally in parts of the European far-right. This study explores how this has taken shape in Sweden, a country where there has been a political consensus about the seriousness of climate change. The ascendance of the far-right, however, has led to this consensus breaking down.
The four empirical papers of the thesis analyse the climate change discourses on five Swedish far-right alternative media sites during the years 2018-2019 and in connection with the release of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report in 2021 (the physical science basis). The study shows how certain far-right media actors used literal denialist argumentation to renounce the science of climate change. This renouncement was used in the further far-right media ecosystem to designate climate change as a ridiculous topic using for example scare-quoting. Also, there was widespread, misogynistic opposition to Greta Thunberg.
The thesis’ kappa introduces the term the climate change reactionary movement, to highlight how far-right opposition to climate change policies is connected to anti-feminism and nationalism. The nostalgic gaze of the Swedish far-right is towards the 1950s and 1960s and a society characterised by gendered divisions of labour, strong beliefs in technological innovation, and increased welfare for those deemed to be belonging to the nation. But this nostalgic gaze ignores that it was a society built on extensive exploitation of natural resources and otherised people, and fuelled by the carbon that today is threatening living conditions on the planet.
The empirical analyses are done using methods from critical discourse analysis and content analysis, and the interdisciplinary theoretical framework is built on concepts from gender studies (industrial/breadwinner and petro-masculinities), environmental sociology (climate change obstruction), sociology (states of denial), political ecology (far right), media studies (propaganda feedback-loop) and history (concerning nationalism, industrial modernity, and fossil capital).
Keywords: climate obstruction, denialism, nationalism, masculinities, modernity, alternative media, anti-reflexivity, Sweden
... An important contextual factor in the case of the Swedish fuel protests is national climate politics. As one of the first countries to adopt a general carbon tax in 1991 (Hildingsson and Knaggård 2022), economic climate policies are not new to the population of Sweden. In 2017, a climatepolitical framework was adopted, intended to support the political target of achieving net zero emissions by 2045, with milestone targets along the way (Karlsson 2021). ...
This article examines the role of moral arguments in the delegitimation of transition policies. Previous research has highlighted attitudes and arguments that explain resistance against transition policies, including perceptions of unfairness; inefficiency and effectiveness; lack of trust; and ideology. This article provides further understanding of resistance to climate policies by zooming in on how social movements implicitly and explicitly use moral arguments to delegitimise low-carbon transition policies. Through a qualitative interview study with members of a Swedish social media movement against low-carbon transport policies, we analyse central arguments against policies; how moral considerations figure in them; and how these strengthen argumentative delegitimation practices against transition policies in the transport sector. We show how moral arguments serve to legitimise protests both by instilling an urgency in the cause and generalising the demands to delegitimise mainstream transition policies, and suggest that recognition of this may contribute to both better analysis and policies.
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There is strong scientific evidence for the existence of the significant economic value of several climate-related co-benefits. However, these are seldom recognised in policy-making, and knowledge is still scarce on some co-benefit types and categories. To identify research needs and highlight policy-making opportunities, we propose a new framework and three-type-taxonomy of climate-related co-benefits. We define climate policy co-benefits, such as improved air quality, as ‘Type 1’; co-benefits for climate objectives from policy-making in other fields, such as taxation, as ‘Type 2’; and co-benefits from policies designed to achieve multiple objectives as ‘Type 3’. In order to apply the framework and to analyse how co-benefits have been regarded in policy-making in a climate pioneering country, we also explore the case of Sweden. It is shown that several co-benefits exist, but that these are overlooked almost entirely in policy-making, constituting a bias against climate mitigation. In order to counteract this problem, the article presents a number of recommendations, including a call to researchers to identify and quantify additional co-benefits and to policy-makers on governance reforms, including the need to organise policy-making processes and set decision criteria that promote the consideration of co-benefits.
The interest in the economics of climate change and the need to quantify a more accurate financial value of the damage caused by every additional metric tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG), known as the social cost of carbon (SCC), is growing. Governments and decision-makers have utilised SCC estimations for more than ten years in benefit-cost analysis, using insights from climate science, economics, demography, and other fields. Malaysia has committed to reduce 45% of its GHG emission intensity by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 compared to the 2005 level and achieve net-zero as early as the year 2050. However, current estimations of SCC are high and may negatively impact the Malaysian economy and no longer align with the latest research. To achieve its objective of net-zero emissions, the government of Malaysia must capitalise on the country's potential as a carbon sink by increasing conservation efforts in protected areas and arresting deforestation. It will establish an ideal trajectory for the SCC that aligns with its environmental obligations while supporting sustainability in the face of climate change challenges. A price on GHG emissions can help mitigate and adapt to climate change. This study aims to determine the SCC in Malaysia, fill the gap in the downscaled Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and develop a new model called the Integrated Climate Model for Malaysia (ICLIM-2024R). The Nordhaus IAM model was downscaled using Malaysian data, including emissions from deforestation and an additional function for carbon sinks. With current policies, the SCC in the business-as-usual scenario (BAU) will be 64 USD/tCO 2 e in 2025 and 212 USD/tCO 2 e by 2050. The study recommended pathway is to increase the Totally Protected Area (TPA) of forests, which will yield a lower SCC of 23 USD/tCO 2 e in 2025 and 152 USD/tCO 2 e by 2050 compared to BAU, meeting commitments to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) as well as the Paris Agreement. The Malaysian government should urgently leverage its carbon sink potential to set Malaysia's optimal SCC, achieve its net-zero goal, and grow the climate-friendly economy by marketing lower carbon-intensity products.
Graphical Abstract
This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to what extent it can be considered a policy success. It also points towards the driving forces of success, and the challenges that have had to be overcome to achieve it. Combined, the chapters provide a resource for policy evaluation researchers, educators and students of public policy and public administration, both within and beyond the Nordic region.
