Climate change strategy and renewable energy issues in EU and Sweden

Discussions about the climate changes and actions to counter the adverse effects of the massive historic and ongoing emissions have reached far beyond the scientific conferences. Climate activists like Greta Thunberg have gotten attention and recognition. This has also made the public more aware about the issue than before. Together with the strong scientific advice presented by IPCC around the urgency in taking action to reach the 1.5°C target, things are starting to happen. EU had set a goal of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions with 20% until 2020, which was reached ahead of time. The added knowledge developed during that time also have raised the awareness that the transition to a low carbon economy needs to be accelerated. In 2019 EU presented the green deal where it was stated that the EU would transform to become the first carbon neutral continent by 2050 (this is also in line with the IPPC estimation on when the world needs to become carbon neutral to achieve the 1,5°C target). Originally the EU set a part-target to reduce the emissions with 40% until 2030, this has since been revised to increase the ambition and the new target is 55% to 2030. To achieve these targets there has been several different packages developed. The green deal contains a multitude of actions, both on energy aspects like energy efficiency and replacing fossil energy sources, but also actions on circular economy to decrease the emissions driven by mass-consumption and in practice by the economic development. As one of the goals, the decoupling of resource use from the economic growth is mentioned. Amid the hunting after greenhouse gas emissions, it can be easy to ignore other sustainability aspects, however they are also part of the green deal. Bioenergy is mentioned but it will be connected with demands on the sustainability and coupled to aspects like biodiversity. On top of the measures EU also have identified the finance sector as a driver in the transformation, to guide the sector on what should be considered as sustainable actions, a Taxonomy is being developed. Sweden has been early in the transformation away from fossil fuels. This is especially true when it comes to the heating sector where district heating has made it possible to replace fossil fuels with bioenergy in a large scale. This has also been the case with the utilization of Waste-to-Energy where today, close to 50% of the MSW is treated in WtE facilities. With the increased demands on carbon neutrality these also face demands on reducing their fossil emissions. A multitude of actions to succeed with this is investigated, including measures to increase the separation of plastics from the residual waste, exchanging support fuels to bio-oils, and BECCS/CCS.