Volition and Environmental Assessment in Swedish Municipal Energy Plans

There are several policy instruments for managing energy systems at the local level, for municipal energy planning, which is a means for local authorities to manage the local energy system. This article analyses the municipal Energy Planning which has been required by Swedish law since 1997. Recent energy plans are compared with earlier plans. The aim is to see if recent energy plans are different and if the observed differences can be explained by the impact of external factors, for example other policy instruments. The results show that the both the scope of expressed volition and environmental assessments have changed substantially between the two sets of energy plans studied. Newer energy plans include more goals for transports and information, but fewer goals for environmental aspects. Environmental assessments are more commonly occurring in the newer plans, but focus to large extent on emissions of carbon dioxide and climate change. It is concluded that these differences can largely be explained by a rather weak legislation, which allows external factors to influence the energy planning process. It is further concluded that it is important to include environmental assessments in the energy planning process to avoid problem shifting. Such assessments must include more environmental consequences than simply the emissions of carbon dioxide