2023-05-15 09:02:59
The reduction will come into force from the start of next year, and would, the parties said reduce the price of diesel at the pump by 5.5 kronor, while the price of petrol would only fall slightly.
The biofuels obligation, or reduction plicrequires fuel retailers to blend in a proportion of biofuels in the petrol and diesel they sell and was a key component of Sweden’s plan to meet its carbon emissions targets.
The Moderate, Christian Democrat, Liberal and Sweden Democrat parties announced their agreement in a joint opinion article published in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Sunday.
They said the decision would mean a reduction of biofuels in diesel by 34 percentage points for diesel and 6.5 percentage points for petrol, compared to what it would have been if it was kept at the level previously scheduled for 2024.
“Emissions from car traffic must continue to reduce rapidly, but the biofuels obligation is not an effective measure to promote the transition, but is only destructive to household finances,” they wrote.
They said that the limited resources of biofuels available should be used for marine and air transport, while the focus for land vehicles should be on electrification.
Green Party co-leader Märta Stenevi called the move a “double betrayal of families with children” during a political debate on Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, saying the move would increase emissions “massively” and would so “betray children’s future”.
Centre Party leader Muharrem Demirok denounced the move as “completely irresponsible” without compensatory measures which will allow Sweden to reach its climate goals.
The Social Democrat’s finance spokesperson Mikael Damberg, however, held back from criticising the idea of reducing the biofuels obligation in itself.
“Something that is irritating is that the government is still not providing an assessment of the consequences of this proposal,” he told the TT newswire.
He also said that the reduction fell far below what was required to meet the Sweden Democrats election promise of a 10 kronor reduction in the price of fuel at the pump.
“The Sweden Democrats’ voters are starting to be apprehensive now about broken promises. They promised prices at the pump would go down 10 percent and now there’s yet another announcement of something which is going to happen later on, but you still don’t know the consequences of the policy. They last time they said taxes were going down one krona it turns out to be 14 öre. Once again, there’s a lot of talk but little actual delivery.”
The fuel refinery Preem, which is investing heavily in biofuels, questioned the claim that reducing the obligation would make fuel 5.5 kronor cheaper.
“You won’t find anyone in the business who believes it will be anything close to that number,” the company’s press chief, Dani Backteg, told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
Marcus Dahlsten, chief executive of the The Swedish Confederation of Transport Enterprises, said that the 6 percent level was too low, and criticised the government for giving no indication of what would happen after the next election in 2025.
“We think it is remarkable that the government has not given any indication over how it will develop after this mandate period. In an issue as important as the green transition, the transport sector requires clear and long-term rules of play,” he said in a press message.
Dahlsten also points out that there are now even stronger reasons to further speed up electrification. In order to cope with the green transition and maintain competitiveness, the government must now present purchase support for electric heavy and light trucks and charging infrastructure. Electricity production must also increase and the electricity grids must be strengthened and expanded, he says
The Swedish environment consultant Mattias Goldmann told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that there was no way that growth in the use of electric vehicles could make up for slashing the obligation, at least not before 2030, when Swedish emissions are supposed to be 63 percent lower than in 1990.
“There are five million cars on the roads which are now going to have their tanks filled with considerably more fossil fuels. It’s not possible to compensate by increasing the share of electric cars,” he said.
He said the biofuels obligation was a “cost-effective measure”, as it uses existing vehicles and infrastructure, and was deemed essential for Sweden meeting its climate goals by both the Swedish Climate Policy Council and Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency.
#Swedish #food #prices #drop #inflation #beats #expectations