Under Sweden’s Climate Law, the Swedish Climate Policy Council is tasked with giving a verdict once a year on whether Sweden’s current climate policy puts the country on track to reach its national and EU emissions goals for 2030, and its long-term emissions goals for 2045. 

In this year’s verdict, the council accused the government of bringing in policies which actually increase emissions, pushing responsibility for meeting Sweden’s climate goals to whichever governments gets into power after the 2026 election. 

“Taken together, the climate action plan takes us down an unnecessarily risky path for Sweden’s climate transition,” the council wrote in a press release announcing the report.

The climate policy action plan presented on December 21st last year, it complained, “does not live up to the requirements of the Climate Act and lacks concreteness”, containing “neither emissions forecasts nor timelines for climate policy.” 

“We have reviewed the government’s action plan and find that the claim that it sets the conditions to get all the way to net zero emissions in 2045 is misleading and not based in fact,”, the council’s vice chairman Björn Sandén said.

Daniel Helldén, spokesperson for Sweden’s Green Party, said that the report showed that the government did not have a real climate plan. 

“This is damaging for Sweden, for businesses, for jobs, for growth and above all for the climate issue. It’s going to be an enormous amount of work to try and turn back round the boat that they sunk,” he said. 

He accused the government of actively trying to deceive the public. 

“They’re dumping everything on us and hoping to get away with it. The climate policy council says that the plan is misleading and not based in fact and of course the climate minister is trying to say they believe in it anyway. I’d say that they’re lying.” 

The opposition Social Democrats and the Left Party called on the government to issue a new, updated climate plan, along with a new budget which puts Sweden’s emissions curve back on track.  

“Now we can only hope that the government takes the criticism to heart and returns to the parliament with an updated climate action plan and budgets that do not increase emissions,” the party’s climate policy spokesperson, Anna-Caren Sätherberg, said. 

“That we have a government that is breaking the law is simply insane,” complained Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar. “The government must now change direction. A total demolition like this cannot be allowed to go unnoticed.”

In its recommendations, the council calls on the government to quickly decide on and then implement a new package of measures to reduce emissions from the transport sector and machinery segment, to draw up a plan for increased absorption of carbon dioxide in forests, giving the government a deadline of June 30th 2024 to set out how Sweden’s EU commitments can be achieved.