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The Vicissitudes of Energy and ClimatePolicy in Stockholm: Politics, Materialityand Transition

Jonathan Rutherford

[Paper first received, May 2012; in final form, March 2013]

Abstract

Through analysis of the orientations, conflicts and challenges of recent energy–climatepolicy in Stockholm, this paper interrogates how energy and climate become (trans-lated as) a set of issues which come to matter in the local urban arena for differentsocial and political interests. Drawing in particular on recent theoretical work onurban materiality, it is argued that ongoing, ‘everyday’ local struggles over the pro-cesses and practices of transformation of the urban fabric constitute repoliticised set-tings through and in which the orientations of urban energy transition are materiallyunderstood, experienced and performed in diverging ways. In ‘mapping’ the undulat-ing politics of energy–climate matters, the paper outlines an alternative way of follow-ing and/or measuring energy and carbon flows through the urban environment.

Keywords: district heating, energy and climate policy, Stockholm, Sweden,urban materiality, urban politics

1. Introduction

In 2010 the European Commission madeStockholm, the capital city of Sweden, thefirst Green Capital of Europe. The city haslong had a reputation of being one of thegreenest cities in Europe and this rewardrecognised its long-established concernand policies for environmental protectionand improvement (it is currently imple-menting its sixth consecutive EnvironmentProgramme). It regularly ranks amongst

the world’s most liveable cities according tosurveys by media outlets and consultantfirms including the Siemens/The EconomistGreen Cities Index and the Mercer Qualityof Life index. Stockholm is therefore usu-ally presented as an emblematic example ofbest practice in sustainable urbanism andin resilient city-making (see, for example,Girardet, 2000; Newman et al., 2009; Lux-Research, 2012). The municipality’s

Jonathan Rutherford is in the Ecole des ParisTech, LATTS (Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires etSocietes), 6–8 avenue Blaise Pascal, Marne-la-Vallee cedex 2, F-77455, France. Email:[email protected].

Special Issue Article: Urban Energy Transitions: Places, Processes and Politics of Socio-technical Change1–22, 2013

0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online� 2013 Urban Studies Journal Limited

DOI: 10.1177/0042098013500088 at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech on September 9, 2013usj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


international relations department co-ordi-nates more visits from foreign delegatesseeking knowledge and ideas about envi-ronmental issues and ‘sustainable’ cityplanning than about any other policy topic.Practitioners and politicians play majorroles in transnational or interurban net-works about environmental policy, andespecially energy–climate policy.

The municipality’s climate mitigationpolicies are not the sole element of this‘green’ image, but they do constitute animportant part of it, thus illustrating theemerging role of climate policy in city brand-ing strategies (see Gustavsson and Elander,2012). The environmental department of themunicipality has had a climate action plansince the mid 1990s and there have been sig-nificant efforts to measure the carbon sav-ings associated with specific projects andactivities. These climate efforts work in turnto a large extent through energy policy wherethe municipality has, in theory, the mostleverage (district heating, decarbonisingpublic transport, energy efficient construc-tion, retrofitting of existing buildings, etc.).It is here therefore that the discourse of dec-arbonisation encounters the materiality ofthe urban fabric. Policy documents presentthis encounter as largely unproblematic,with the municipality and other actors ableto adjust and render malleable the urbanbuilt environment for a coming fossil-fuel-free age. Yet already in the recent past, theencounter between urban political regimesin Stockholm and material city-building hasbeen ‘messy’ and contentious (Gullberg andKaijser, 2004; see also Stahre, 2004). And anumber of areas of tension and struggle haveindeed emerged around energy–climateagendas and issues that problematise anyactual idea of shared pathways, visions andgoals, and therefore contribute to repoliticis-ing the city’s environmental agenda.

The material politics of energy–climateagendas in the Swedish capital is thus the focus

of this paper. It goes beyond the question ofthe priorities and implications of policy dis-course in this area to analyse how energy andclimate become (translated as) a set of issueswhich come to matter in the local urban arenain a conjoined political and material sense. Inshort, the paper is less interested in the con-struction of Stockholm as an ‘exceptional’green city than in the ordinary, daily politics ofthe urban environment as practised by a hostof local actors and groups with diverging inter-ests. By delving into the concrete actions andinfrastructures through which energy–climatepolicy is being both implemented and con-tested in Stockholm, the paper aims to unpackthe ongoing, ‘everyday’ struggles over theurban materialities of energy transition, thushighlighting the diversity of ways in whichchange is understood, negotiated, experiencedand engaged with.

The paper is structured in five furthersections. In section 2, we start from existingwork on urban low carbon/energy transitionsand urban materiality to argue that by think-ing through the multiple materialities whichare both inherently present in and the out-come of energy flows (broadly defined) incities, we might develop a better understand-ing of the contested pathways of transition.The main body of the paper (sections 3 and4) is given over to analysis of the orientationsand (especially) the conflicts around energy–climate issues in Stockholm. Section 5 relatesthe findings from the Stockholm analysis backto the theoretical framework and offers somecritical reflections on politics, urban material-ity and energy transitions. The conclusionsums up the argument and briefly suggestssome issues which merit further research.

2. Rematerialising Urban EnergyTransitions

As part of a focus on urban environmentalchange within and beyond sustainable

2 JONATHAN RUTHERFORD



urban development (see, for example, Lowet al., 2000; Coutard and Levy, 2010), thereis a growing, diverse literature in urbanstudies on cities and their positions withregard to wider evolutions in energy systemsand climate change, and the actual andpotential roles of urban actors in developinglocal responses to these evolutions. Manyresearchers have stressed the role of localand urban authorities in enacting responsesto energy–climate issues within a dominantmultilevel governance framework (Bulkeleyand Betsill, 2003; Alber and Kern, 2009;Corfee-Morlot et al., 2009; Gustavsson et al.,2009) and a number of papers have pro-vided case studies of these urban responses(Monstadt, 2007; Rutland and Aylett, 2008;Coutard and Rutherford, 2010; see also thepapers in Bulkeley et al., 2011). There is thusa widespread identification of the increas-ingly strategic and transversal place of thesepolicies and their associated actions withinurban governance and urban politics as awhole, in some cases to the point where anew urban paradigm or mode of governanceis being seen to emerge around energy–climate issues (Hodson and Marvin, 2009;Jonas et al., 2011). Notions of ‘resilience’,‘security’ and ‘control’ are used here to cap-ture an ecological turn in the central policyconcerns of urban practitioners as they seekto ‘protect’ and ‘insure’ the reproduction ofcities in a context of climate change, peak oiland constrained resource flows. In theseanalyses, whether normatively or criticallyoriented, urban actors are trying to ‘defend’their cities from perceived (external) threats,but they are doing so by going on the offen-sive and (proactively) reconfiguring infra-structures and resource metabolisms to bemore robust and autonomous.

This recent work is very attuned to theappropriation of discourses of resilience toparticular political ends and the subsequentshaping of infrastructures for urban eco-nomic development goals and for a new

zero-sum game of interurban competitionfor dwindling environmental resources. Yetthere is also a need to link this strategic,discursive level of infrastructure politics tomore consideration of how energy and cli-mate issues become politicised on a morelocally contingent, everyday level, close towhat Jonas et al. (2011, p. 2548) term the‘‘politics of the urban living space’’. Thisinvolves exploring the trade-offs and com-promises in decision-making, the differen-tial impacts of policy actions on the varietyof groups and interests present, and issuesof responsibility and accountability in newforms of urban energy governance (‘‘Whois governing what?’’: Wihlborg and Palm,2008).

Part of this involves recognition of themultiple, contested roles of urban infra-structures in operating energy and low-carbon transitions (Hodson and Marvin,2009; Monstadt, 2009; Coutard andRutherford, 2011), thus reaffirming themediating function of infrastructures insocio-natural transformations of urbanenvironments (Kaika and Swyngedouw,2000; Karvonen, 2011). This work inher-ently focuses on the evolutions and reconfi-gurations of infrastructures (thereby seeingthe latter as dynamic rather than fixed andstatic) and sees the materialities of infra-structures as emerging as much in thesocio-political negotiations they demand asin the actual technical deployment of physi-cal networks (McFarlane and Rutherford,2008). Understanding infrastructure thusalways involves taking into account a widerset of materials than the basic, physical,largely inert equipment which makes upthe network systems which are deployed inthe urban environment. This set of materi-als cannot just be constituted by followinga broader variety of objects and things asthey are mobilised in policy-making andcontestation. It invokes more a need toopen out notions of urban materiality to

ENERGY/CLIMATE POLICY IN STOCKHOLM 3



account for the multiple settings and arenasin flux through and in which urbanenergy–climate policies and issues arematerialised and transformed. This is toargue that a focus on urban materiality is afocus directly on the contested processesand practices of change, because the diverseways in which people understand andengage with the shifting sites and arenas ofnegotiation constantly work and reworkthe material constructions and experiencesof their living space.

Such an approach builds on recentreflections on the materiality of the city as afruitful way into thinking through reconfi-gurations of the urban in current times(Amin and Thrift, 2002; Lees, 2002; Lathamand McCormack, 2004; Hubbard, 2006).This push to ‘rematerialise’ urban studieshas been partly about taking issue with anincreasing proliferation of work on imma-terial culture and representations influencedby the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1990s, whichhas had a tendency to overdetach subjectiv-ity, identity, experience, etc. from the tangi-ble, evident artifacts, forms and processes ofcities. Yet it has also been about a more fun-damental recognition that urban studiesscholars have generally ‘underconceptua-lised’ urban matter (Latham et al., 2009).This is not merely a question of returningto empirical studies of concrete objects andthings in cities. Rematerialisation argu-ments have indeed particularly called for,and highlighted in existing work (Lees,2002), deeper and more varied articulationsof the material and immaterial to getbeyond a duality which has sometimes beenused

as a shorthand for tensions between empiri-

cal and theoretical, applied and academic,

concrete and abstract, reality and representa-

tion, quantitative and qualitative, objective

and subjective, political economy and cul-

tural studies, and so on (Lees, 2002, p. 102).

One way to rematerialise urban studies isto focus on the relations between peopleand objects, and the multiplicity of ways inwhich things are understood, used, mobi-lised and experienced. Materiality here isviewed as ‘‘a spatio-temporal process inwhich the more tangible, physical stuff ofthe city is a lively participant’’ (Lathamet al., 2009, p. 62, original emphasis). Thisdoes not imply that we can no longer studythe (a priori less visible and less tangible)social meanings and power relations boundup in or cast into urban form and the builtenvironment, but that we study these ques-tions differently

as an active and engaged process of under-

standing, rather than as a product to be read

off retrospectively from its social and histori-

cal context [by a] detached analytical obser-

ver (Lees, 2002, p. 107).

By not just focusing on policy representa-tions (which have been the centre of atten-tion of much research on urban energy–climate issues), but by foregroundinginstead urban materialities which articulatethe everyday engagements of people (inha-bitants, users, practitioners, politicians,operators, etc.) and artifacts within a policycontext of low-carbon discourses andvisions of imagined cities, we privilege anapproach focused on ‘‘the practical negotia-tion of the city’’ (Hubbard, 2006, p. 96).This does not just account for things in theurban environment, but is especially con-cerned about how things come to matter tothe various interest groups of low-carbon,energy efficient cities in the making. Thisapproach focuses on the different ways inwhich objects, points of contention andpolicy orientations are made visible, tangi-ble and/or durable by or for these groupsthrough, for example, practices of ‘order-ing, circulation and manipulation’ (Lathamet al., 2009). Such a perspective is implicit




when Betsill and Bulkeley (2007, p. 452)discuss the need to reframe global climatechange as a local stake, often by linking itto issues already on the local agenda—i.e.what matters to people—or when researchfocused on energy production highlightsthe combination of local decisions and situ-ated power plants and networks throughwhich national policies and national sys-tems pass in connecting consumers(Wessberg, 2002; Akerman and Peltola,2006). In this approach, what is material(or what matters) is not just or not somuch physical objects per se but more thevarying relations bound up in them in theways they are used, experienced, performedand understood in different ways. AsLatham and McCormack argue, urbanmateriality must be viewed as present inthe connections between things, technolo-gies, people, bodies, signs, texts, etc. withnone of these as inherently more materialor immaterial than the others

We only begin to properly grasp the complex

realities of apparently stable objects by taking

seriously the fact that these realities are always

held together and animated by processes

excessive of form and position (Latham and

McCormack, 2004, p. 705).

The production and reproduction of cities isa ‘hybrid’ affair, not just operated by people,but equally by other more ‘fluid’ (‘more-than-human’) presences (see Whatmore,2002; Latour, 2005), such that we are calledin fine

to explore the way these materials combine

in particular instances with particular forces,

and to scrutinise how this play of effects and

affects produces particular urban formations

(Hubbard, 2006, p. 248).

It follows that this is crucially an inherentlypoliticised process, as different powers and

capacities to act confront through and overmatter/materiality (Latham et al., 2009, p.64). This process of making things matter isnot merely about top–down imposition ordecision-making, but is constantly inflectedby people’s differing positions with regardto the objects in question (what matters,how and to whom). As Hubbard puts it:‘‘After all, cities may be scripted, but ourperformances do not always follow thescript’’ (Hubbard, 2006, p. 126). Prescribedpolicy goals, visions and actions can there-fore be reinterpreted (or misinterpreted),reiterated and contested by the differentgroups and interests present according towhat matters to them. Urban materialitythus becomes a key arena for urban politicsas a set of ‘‘everyday struggles over ecologi-cal (re)production and consumption’’(MacLeod and Jones, 2011, p. 2450).

In this way, introducing some of therecent thinking around urban materialityinto debates around energy and climateissues could therefore complement andextend existing work around strategic infra-structure and systemic socio-technicalchange by showing how the process ofmaking things matter is an inherently con-tested operation or encounter of multipleco-existing engagements with the concreteobjects, natures and flows of the urban livingspace. What this approach to materialityoffers for the study of urban energy–climateissues is a more precise understanding ofthe disparate settings and arenas in andthrough which policy discourse and goalsare actively translated into actual concreteactions and political interventions. Thesematerial settings and arenas are constitutedby shifting relations and engagementsbetween multiple urban actors and all kindsof objects, including, but not reduced to,infrastructures. They are also thereforeinherently constitutive of (the potential for)socio-political struggles as the orientationsof ongoing and future urban ecological




transition are materially understood, experi-enced and performed in diverging ways.

In empirical terms, the intersectionsbetween local politics, planning and urbanmateriality have been implicit in varyingguises in much recent urban research onStockholm, which has thus been attentive tothe shifting nature and varied implicationsof urban development and environmentalobjectives in the city within the context ofthe widely observed ‘ecological modernisa-tion’ of Sweden (Lundqvist, 2000; Fudgeand Rowe, 2001; Anshelm, 2002; Vail, 2008;Gunnarsson-Ostling and Hojer, 2011;Hilding-Rydevik et al., 2011). These inter-sections have been studied through: a studyof the very different long-term (sustainable)urban development scenarios for Stockholmanalysed from an environmental justice per-spective (Gunnarsson-Ostling and Hojer,2011; see also Hojer et al., 2011); a focus onthe practice of sustainable urban planningand both its equity and justice implications(Bradley, 2009) and the actor networkstranslating nature–society relations intospecific projects (Bylund, 2006); a historicalperspective on the differing planningregimes in the city over the past few decades(Gullberg and Kaijser, 2004); highlightingof the role of social movements in urbanchange and evolutions in local politics(Stahre, 2004); and analysis of changes ininfrastructure and network service provi-sion in the light of economic and environ-mental reforms (Rutherford, 2008). Thesestudies come to a shared conclusion that thetraditional social equality goals of urbanand environmental planning in the Swedishcapital have evolved and that the ongoingmaterial planning processes, practices andstruggles in the city thus merit greatattention.

Having outlined a way of thinking abouthow ongoing debates around energy, climateand urban development might be framed bynotions of urban materiality, in particular as

a contested, politicised process of multipleengagements between particular interestgroups and urban matter, we now turn toexplore the orientation of energy–climatepolicy in Stockholm (section 3) and, in par-ticular, how energy–climate issues effectivelymaterialise in the local political arena as a setof struggles over pathways of (low-carbon)urban transition (section 4).1

3. Energy–climate policy inStockholm

The municipal policy of the City ofStockholm in the domain of energy and cli-mate change dates back at least twodecades, with the Swedish capital achievinginternational recognition for being one ofthe few municipalities to have initiated amajor energy and climate policy pro-gramme which has generated measurablesuccess. This was one of the main reasonsfor Stockholm becoming the first GreenCapital of Europe.2 Before the Action Planfor Climate and Energy adopted in 2010(City of Stockholm, 2010d), the City ofStockholm implemented three Action pro-grammes against greenhouse gases, covering1995–2000 (City of Stockholm, 1998),2000–05 (City of Stockholm, 2003) and2005–15 (City of Stockholm, 2007b), thefirst two of which met their objectives interms of emissions reductions.

Greenhouse gas emissions are estimatedto have decreased by over 24 per centbetween 1990 and 2009, during which timethe population of the city actually increasedby 22 per cent (Figure 1). This meant areduction in greenhouse gas emissions of38 per cent per resident between 1990 and2009 (City of Stockholm, 2010d, p. 7).

Energy and climate policy in Stockholmhas taken advantage of the combination ofthe orientations of the national policy con-text in Sweden3 and local factors and




resources, including a dense urban core(with further densification as an explicitplanning goal) and a star-shaped urbanstructure (RTK, 2002, p. 85; City ofStockholm, 2010e, p. 10; Gunnarsson-Ostling and Hojer, 2011, p. 1055), whichallow policy orientation to draw on econo-mies of scale relative to the size of the city.

The decentralisation of many responsibil-ities and mandates to local governmentmeans that municipalities hold manypowers, including over land use and plan-ning, and have real possibilities for discre-tionary action on energy and climate issues,even if they have no obligations in thisdomain4 (Gustavsson et al., 2009). So,although the City mentions a number of fac-tors which account for its apparent success(City of Stockholm, 2003, p. 11), the simul-taneous expansion and decarbonisation ofdistrict heating in Stockholm is primordial.Figure 1 shows clearly the weight of the dis-trict heating sector in emissions reductionssince 1990. Expansion of the heating net-work has been an explicit policy of the City

with local detailed plans encouraging bothnew-build and renovations to be connectedto the network and to use energy efficientmethods to reduce consumption.5 Districtheating now covers almost 80 per cent ofheating demand in the city. Decarbonisationof the heating sector in Stockholm (as inother Swedish cities) has to be seen as adirect result of the national carbon tax intro-duced in 1991 which has been levied on theemitted quantities of carbon dioxide fromall fuels except biofuels and peat, whichpushed district heating companies intoabandoning fossil fuels in favour notably ofbiofuels. The Stockholm heating systemruns now on almost 80 per cent renewables.

The overarching long-term policy objec-tive for energy and climate in Stockholm isfor the city to be ‘fossil-fuel-free’ in 2050 by‘‘continu[ing] to reduce greenhouse gasemissions at the same rate as in the past[1990–2005]’’ (City of Stockholm, 2010a,p. 8). Yet, at the same time, major strategicplanning orientations in Stockholm arecurrently guided by the Vision 2030: a

Figure 1. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions in Stockholm, 1990–2009.Source: City of Stockholm (2010d, p. 10)




world-class Stockholm document which wasadopted by the right-of-centre Moderate/Alliance-led Stockholm City Council inJune 2007 (City of Stockholm, 2007c). Thissets out a ‘‘sustainable growth’’ vision for ‘‘adenser and better connected Stockholm’’ aswell as around 200,000 new residents overthe next 20 years, but is also (and primarily)about taking Stockholm to the world. Inthe introduction, the Mayor of Stockholmtalks about ‘‘sharpening Stockholm’s com-petitive edge’’ and creating ‘‘an internation-ally competitive capital region’’. As sheargued: ‘‘We are sufficiently large to offerthe sort of qualities that will enable us tocompete with the world’s great metropo-lises’’ (City of Stockholm, 2007c, p. 3). Thisvision underpins all subsequent planningdocuments and work

All the administrations and companies within

the City of Stockholm are required to help

make this vision a reality, both in their daily

activities and through long-term develop-

ment work (City of Stockholm, 2010e, p. 11).

Thus, the more recent City Plan (adopted byStockholm City Council in March, 2010)6 isseen as ‘‘a clear example of how this visionof the future can be made more concrete’’(City of Stockholm, 2010e, p. 11), throughits outlining of a number of urban develop-ment strategies and focus areas representing‘public interests’.

This begins to get at some of the underly-ing tensions to energy–climate policy inStockholm. Although the City of Stockholmhas clearly made a far greater contribution tolocal climate mitigation than the majority ofother European cities, it is still important tohighlight areas, arenas or issues of recent con-tention which problematise the idea of a setof municipal actors speaking for the city andengaging it on a single, already-marked-outpathway to reach already-agreed-upon goalsfor the short term and the long term.

Following Hubbard’s call to study the urbanperformances which do not necessarily followthe script prescribed by policy discourse, inthe next section I analyse three areas of con-flict which constitute particularly importantmaterial struggles over urban transition.

4. Three Matters of Contentionaround Energy–Climate Policy

4.1 Trajectories, Resources andRedistribution

The ‘world-class’ vision mobilises a particu-lar idea of how energy and climate issues cancontribute to urban development. Indeed,although it engages the City on a pathway to‘an ecologically sustainable city’ and men-tions the ‘fossil-fuel-free’ goal, these are dis-cussed within the theme of ‘innovation andgrowth’. It is clear therefore that, far frombeing contradictory or incompatible, thetwo objectives of becoming ‘world-class’and ‘fossil-fuel-free’ are presented as achiev-able in parallel, with the latter contributingto the former, while ‘‘technological develop-ments and economic growth now provide asolid foundation for an ecologically sustain-able society’’ (City of Stockholm, 2007c,p. 11). The Green Capital of Europe awardin 2010 fits well with this parallel trajectoryas environmental actions and the ‘fossil-fuel-free’ goal bring the prestige, extra (eco)-tourism and new investments that are adver-tised as the main benefits of the award(European Commission, 2010, p. 13).7

By contrast, other observers are far fromcertain that the two goals are wholly com-patible. As well as a number of social move-ments that have been active since the late1990s in contesting the neoliberal tenden-cies of ‘competitive city’ discourses (Stahre,2004), the Green Party in Stockholm hasmore recently been particularly critical ofthe overarching influence and implications




of the majority’s ‘world class’ strategic plan-ning document

Vision 2030 conflicts with the creation of an

environmentally sustainable city and with

the achievement of the city’s climate goals.

The process should have been formulated in

other ways than the vision of ‘Stockholm as

a world-class city’. We question the extent to

which this captures people’s vision of their

Stockholm. It is our assessment that most

Stockholmers simply want a good place to

live, for themselves and their children (City

of Stockholm, 2010c, p. 16).

They also criticised how this vision perme-ated down into the comprehensive City Planwhich

is based on a false self-image and a short-term

thinking . Climate change is a major issue in

urban planning, but in the draft [of the City

Plan] it is only sparingly taken into consider-

ation (City of Stockholm, 2010c, p. 17).

The very ambitious fossil-fuel-free objectivefor 2050 has not met with universal sup-port either. There has been a lack of a pre-cise definition of what would actuallyconstitute a ‘fossil-fuel-free’ city and debateabout the methodology for measuring miti-gation (Green Party representative, inter-view, May 2010). In fact, ‘fossil-fuel-free’ inthis case (only) concerns emissions fromtraffic, electricity and heating. Emissionsassociated with long distance travel,Arlanda airport and especially from con-sumption of goods produced elsewhere(which are estimated to represent half ofStockholm’s CO2 emissions) are thereforeexcluded from measurements

I think that the politicians probably think that

it includes all emissions but it only includes

emissions from heating, cooling, electricity

and traffic. So they might reach this target,

I’m not sure if it is possible or not. But the

problem is, when they say that they are fossil-

fuel-free, it won’t be absolutely true (KTH

researcher, interview, March 2010).

Moreover, but linked to this, is the fact thatthe ‘fossil-fuel-free’ goal was actually offi-cially adopted and taken up as a policyobjective by the municipality after a hand-ful of City politicians saw the existingdeclining curve on the CO2 emissionsgraph for 1990–2005 (see figure 2) anddecided that, if the line was extended, itcould be made to reach zero by 2050 (Cityof Stockholm Environment Departmentofficial, interview, May 2009). Inevitably,given this debatable method and rationalefor deciding on a major policy objective,both technicians within the municipalityand other local environmental actors aredubious about both its achievability andthe extent to which the current majority inpower takes the objective seriously (variousinterviews). The dual purpose of this‘fossil-fuel-free’ policy for decarbonisingStockholm but also marketing the citythroughout the world is another tensionbetween ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ policy-making (see Gustavsson et al., 2009, p. 68)in which the presence of concrete, materiallocal issues and ways of dealing with themappear at first glance to be at odds with the

Figure 2. The trajectory to ‘fossil-fuel-free’.Source: City of Stockholm (2010d, p. 9)




fluffy, discursive need for international rec-ognition, leadership and ‘green’ credentials.

Yet, there is a material dimension to theseattractive long-term goals which emergeswhen trajectories are connected to resourceavailability and use. One of the main factorshighlighted by local practitioners as influen-cing the degree and form of municipalengagement in the energy–climate domainhas been the availability of resources. Therehave been specific central government fund-ing programmes for local environmentalactions (see Granberg and Elander, 2007 fordetails). Between 2004 and 2008, the Citythus received government subsidies ofaround 80 million kronor for the financingof its energy and climate policy actions inthe form of the KLIMP (climate investment)programme of the national EnvironmentalProtection Agency. This allowed more mea-sures to be taken by supplementing theCity’s own ‘Environmental Billion’ funds.8

The two pots of finance have been closelyintertwined

It was easier to get money from the City if

you got 30 per cent or more from the

national. But we also needed the City money

to get the national money (City of Stockholm

Environment Department official, interview,

May 2009).

Other resources in terms of availability ofpersonnel and work time have also beenimportant, as the EnvironmentalDepartment of the municipality has alwaystended to have a certain number of peopleworking on climate mitigation, althoughthis work and the associated actions weremade more difficult during the occasionalperiods when City politicians wanted thesepeople to work on other environmentalissues or when they said there was lessmoney to do climate policy (City ofStockholm Environment Department offi-cial, interview, May 2009).

Since the majority’s decision to end theCity environmental funds, the work requiredto put the ‘fossil-fuel-free’ goal into practiceincreasingly has to take place within a con-text of persistent budget constraint

We have seen for the past four years that

people who are in charge of environment in

Stockholm, they don’t get new money, they

just have ad hoc projects or schemes on their

day-to-day tasks (Social Democrat advisers,

interview, June 2010).

The ‘environmental’ budget of the munici-pality was, in effect, cut by almost halfbetween 2006 and 2009 ‘‘primarily for effi-ciency and prioritisation of core business’’(City of Stockholm, 2007a, p. 114), beforebeing increased slightly to coincide with theGreen Capital award. Nevertheless, munici-pal environmental work in 2011 had abudget more than 30 per cent lower than in2006 and constitutes less than 1 per cent ofthe City’s total budget.9 As a politicaladviser to the Moderate majority stated

Our bottom line is really result oriented . If

you’re using tax paid money you should be

sure that you get some kind of refund or

result with it, you should be really careful

with this money (interview, April 2010).

This means that the hardest and most expen-sive measures for a ‘fossil-fuel-free’ city areput back to some point in the future infavour of ‘business as usual’ (Green Partyrepresentative, interview, May 2010). Thefigures for budget restrictions and the rea-soning behind them thus nuance any idea ofa durable ‘green’ urban policy paradigm.

Following the availability and evolutionof budgets, staffing resources and flows ofmoney are thus important ways in whichenergy–climate actions materialise andbecome sources of conflict in cities. Thishelps to connect up externally oriented




discourses and aspirations such as ‘worldclass’, ‘green capital’ and ‘fossil-fuel-free’with actual commitments to and practicesof urban change. While environmentalactions have contributed to internationalprestige for Stockholm, it is far from clearthat the material benefits of this in terms ofnew resources and investment will be fun-nelled back into reinforcing these actionsfor the collective good. Ongoing worktowards the ‘fossil-fuel-free’ objective is stillhaving constantly to prove its cost effective-ness and value for money which will affectthe forms and outcomes of work that can bedone. In this way, there is an inherentlymaterial dimension to how discursive goalstranslate into everyday policy work and howthis in turn produces (or not) change. Thiscan also be seen when we turn to other spe-cific areas of energy–climate policy.

4.2 The Municipality, the HeatingCompany and ‘Darkness’ on the Edgeof Town

Another major area of controversy concernsthe rather ambivalent position of the City ofStockholm with regard to the Stockholmdistrict heating system. This ambivalencecan be seen in material struggles around thephysical aspects of the system, constantlyrising heating bills for users and the energymix and pollution from one particular plant.

The district heating system covers nearly80 per cent of Stockholm’s total heatingneeds, is still being actively expanded and is,as indicated, a major part of urban energypolicy for CO2 emissions reductions. Thesystem was formerly owned and run by themunicipality, but between 1998 and 2002 aquasi-privatisation process merged themunicipal company with the Finnish energycompany Fortum with the City ofStockholm keeping just 9.9 per cent of theshares (but 50 per cent of the influencethrough half the seats on the board) in the

new entity called Fortum Varme. The Mayorof Stockholm argued at the time that thedeal was good for Stockholm taxpayers andenergy consumers since it limited the city’sbusiness risks and freed up capital that couldbe invested in other projects, notably envi-ronmental projects. The problem has beenthat district heating is a technical monopoly(i.e. the owner of the network is the sole ser-vice provider) and there are substantial costsinvolved for city-centre households wishingto switch to alternative heat systems such asheat pumps (see Hellmer, 2010). Indeed,Fortum Varme has been free to set its ownprices according to competing alternatives,leading to price rises in Stockholm of over60 per cent in the past 10 years (seeFigure 3). The price of district heating inStockholm far surpasses that in other majorSwedish cities, with this difference emergingespecially in the period post-privatisation(Nils-Holgersson-gruppen, 2010). The Cityof Stockholm has not used its presence inthe board of Fortum to contest the pricerises and seems happy with the financialbenefits it receives from its minority share-holding. ‘‘We only own half so we can’t tellwhat to do. All the decisions are thoughstrictly economic’’ (City of StockholmEnvironment Department official, inter-view, May 2009). At the same time, thisincrease in district heating prices is heavilycontested by another part of the Stockholmmunicipality in the form of its housing com-panies which are, logically enough, defend-ing their tenants’ rights on the energymarket. One of these housing companies,Stockholmshem, has become so critical ofthe high prices of Fortum Varme that theyare by-passing the Fortum network in thecity either by reactivating heat productionfrom old boilers of their own or by usinggeothermal heat pumps (Stockholmshemhead of energy department, interview, June2010). In this case here, we have an internalset of conflicts in which some of the




subsidiary companies of the City are activelycontesting the services provided by anotherco-owned municipal company, while, in thisreconfigured governance of a core localsocio-technical system, the question of whois ultimately accountable (and for whatexactly) remains far from clear (seeWihlborg and Palm, 2008).

A further source of controversy concernsa single-district heating plant in the city. On29 May 2010, a group of protesters tried togain access to the Vartaverket (varta meansblack or dark in Swedish) district heatingplant run by Fortum Varme in the north-east of Stockholm. Although nine peoplewere arrested (Bolling and Svahn, 2010),this highly organised and well publiciseddemonstration by the action group ‘Shut ItDown’ brought the ecological credentials ofthe city’s heating system (and, some wouldargue, of the city itself) into question in theyear in which Stockholm was the ‘GreenCapital of Europe’.

The issue is that this particular heatingplant is still half-fired by coal and, given thatthe City is joint owner of Fortum Varme,this is seen as being contrary to the objec-tives of decarbonisation promoted in theCity’s climate policy. Although the companyhas outlined plans to partially convert theplant to biofuels with an aim of at least a 50

per cent admix of biofuels by 2015, environ-mental groups and the city’s Green and Leftparties argue that this is not quick enoughand, in particular, that Fortum has notstated whether and how it intends the plantgradually to become fossil-fuel-free in thelonger term. In 2010, Vartaverket topped theNaturskyddsforeningens (Swedish Societyfor Nature Conservation) list of the worstenvironmental polluters in the Swedish dis-trict heating industry (Aberg, 2010).

This issue has mobilised political opinionacross the board. A 2010 report from theLeft party suggested that the plant producedroughly the same quantity of CO2 equivalentemissions as all the cars in Stockholm andthat it was responsible for fully a quarter ofthe city’s total CO2 equivalent emissions(Holmback and Warlenius, 2010). It alsoquoted a Fortum representative as sayingthat to decommission and replace the exist-ing plant would cost in the region of 4 billionkronor, which the report authors calculateas being either the equivalent of the operat-ing profit that Fortum made in just the firstquarter of 2009 or the estimated cost ofbuilding 3 km of the controversial proposedStockholm by-pass road (see section 4.3)(Holmback and Warlenius, 2010).

There is even evidence of tension anddisagreement about this issue within the

Figure 3. The rising price of district heating in Stockholm, 2000–11.Source: author with data from Nils-Holgersson-gruppen (n.d.).




City. Fortum’s aim for at least a 50 per centadmix of biofuels at Vartan by 2015 is cal-culated by the City as leading to CO2 emis-sions reductions of 235,000 tons/year or 0.3tons/inhabitant/year (City of Stockholm,2010d). In their current Action Plan forEnergy and Climate (p. 36), written by theEnvironment Department, the City alsoraises (as a ‘‘conceivable measure’’) the pos-sibility of Fortum replacing this coal-firedCHP plant with an alternative, cleanerplant—a move that would decrease emis-sions by another 265,000 tons/year or 0.3tons/inhabitant/year. It is clear that theCity’s Environment Department considersthis measure to be highly beneficial forStockholm climate policy.

However, several phrases in the main textof the 2010 Action Plan have been revea-lingly corrected by errata at the end of thedocument (Table 1). While the possibilityof replacing the Vartan plant with a cleaneralternative is considered as ‘‘unprofitable’’or ‘‘not economically viable’’ in the mainbody of the report, this has been correctedto ‘‘not technically feasible’’ (p. 36), as theLeft Party report cast doubt on the eco-nomic argument. Furthermore, the phraseidentifying Vartan CHP Plant 6 as ‘‘thesingle largest source of greenhouse gas emis-sions in Stockholm’’ has been corrected (i.e.deleted) in the Action Plan (p. 37). Other

corrections attempt to nuance the potentialof this ‘‘conceivable measure’’, notably bystating that there would be municipal ‘‘needfor reinvestment in the range of billionsSEK to replace the lost CHP productioncapacity’’ (p. 37) which would change thepossible cost efficiency of such a measurefrom ‘‘high’’ to ‘‘low’’. This issue highlightsquite significant tension and even disagree-ments between the City’s environment divi-sion and the Fortum heating company notjust concerning policy direction and respon-sibility for policy coherence, but cruciallyover different forms of knowledge and theirflexible interpretation.

In short, there is a very real material pol-itics to district heating provision inStockholm through which things like theconfiguration of the technical system, heat-ing bill increases, choices of energy mix andlevels of pollution from plants becomesources of everyday struggle over bothenergy production and consumption, andthe extent to which long-term energy–climate goals can be subject to compromiseand trade-off in the here and now.

4.3 The Congestion Charge and theMotorway: By-passing Climate Goals?

The other main area of contention concernsrecent shifts in mobility and transport policy

Table 1. Changes to the text of Stockholm’s action plan for climate and energy

Text in report Correction in annex ‘errata’

An entire transition to renewable fuels is notconsidered being economically viable byFortum

An entire transition to renewable fuels is notconsidered technically feasible by Fortum

The single largest source of greenhouse gasemissions in Stockholm is CHP Plant 6 inVartan

(deleted)

Cost efficiency [of using renewable fuels insteadof coal] High

Cost efficiency [of using renewable fuels insteadof coal] Low

Source: City of Stockholm, (2010d).




and their effects on urban energy and cli-mate objectives.

The Stockholm congestion charge is atax that has been imposed on the majorityof vehicles in Stockholm ‘‘to deal with con-gestion and traffic disturbances’’ (City ofStockholm, 2010d, p. 11). It was first intro-duced as a trial between January and July2006. A referendum was held in September2006 in which a majority of residents ofStockholm municipality voted to imple-ment it permanently. The charge was there-fore introduced permanently during thefirst half of 2007. Since 2007, the City calcu-lates that traffic to and from the city centrehas declined by an average of almost 20 percent per year, while greenhouse gas emis-sions ‘‘have decreased by just over one percent as a result of congestion tax’’ (City ofStockholm, 2010d, p. 11). Another reportby SLB Analys measured emissions reduc-tions as 4 per cent between 2006 and 2008(SLB-Analys, 2009, p. 4).

Compromise and conflict have emerged,though, in the use of the money obtainedfrom the congestion charge. The incomesreceived were originally supposed to be usedto finance public transport improvements inthe Stockholm region. The Moderate/Alliance majority decided, however, to usethe money to partly finance a new six-laneby-pass road (Forbifart Stockholm) aimedat displacing traffic from the city centre tothe western outskirts and facilitating linksbetween the north and the south of theregion. This road will cost approximately 27billion Swedish kronor to construct and willbe financed to the tune of 80 per cent bycongestion charge income (Swedish Societyfor Nature Conservation, 2010). This deci-sion has been subject to virulent debate atthe local level between the City government,opposition parties and environmentalgroups, and in particular between theModerates who argue that ‘‘it is absolutely

necessary to build it’’ (Moderate Party rep-resentative, interview, April 2010) and theGreens who argue that the project is a tra-vesty which has withdrawn a much-neededsource of investment in local public trans-port (Ojemar, 2010). Indeed, in interviewsconducted in 2010 about political differ-ences between parties on energy and climatework in Stockholm, the new by-pass roadwas unanimously cited as the biggest area ofconflict between the different groups.

The by-pass project was included in thecomprehensive city plan voted by the CityCouncil in spite of much opposition includ-ing from the Green Party and the Left partywho wanted the ‘‘insane project’’ (City ofStockholm, 2010c, p. 23) removed from theplan (City of Stockholm, 2010c, p. 13, p. 22).Some have argued that the by-pass project is‘‘the clearest example’’ of the City not want-ing or being able to meet its own environ-mental objectives (City of Stockholm,2010c, p. 73). Here again, therefore, we havean arena of contention created and workingthrough a politicisation of various material-ities. Most obviously, there is a contestedshift in the objects of policy orientationfrom public transport routes, suburbantrains and collective city-region mobility toroad infrastructure, cars and individual-level automobilities.11 However, this shift isenabled by a complex infrastructure of cam-eras, databases and financial transfers whichproceeds to translate payment for access tothe city centre into tarmac for the motorwayby-pass instead of into the maintenance andextension of the public transport system.There will also in the longer run clearly beconcrete outcomes of this policy shift interms of the changing mobility possibilitiesof different social groups, the upkeep andmaintenance of trains and tracks, and theenvironmental effects on the declining curveof the CO2 emissions graph of financing caruse over public transport.




5. Energy–Climate Issues and thePolitics of Urban Materiality

These policy controversies and contesta-tions can be seen as the arenas within andthrough which energy–climate issues havecome to matter in Stockholm. They come tomatter in at least three ways which reworkour understandings of the intersectionsbetween politics, urban materiality andenergy transitions.

First, focusing on the arenas of debate—i.e. the issues which matter to people on theground and through which energy–climategoals are being implemented, translated andcontested—demonstrates the multiple oralternative analytical ways in which we canfollow, trace or count energy and carbonflows in the urban environment. While themunicipality of Stockholm is evidently keenon highlighting its success in local climatepolicy by measuring and charting the city’sdecreasing greenhouse gas emissions year byyear, the contradictions, compromises andconflicts which lie behind the downwardtrend line on the municipality’s graphsserve to nuance this ‘success’ and constitutealternative ‘measures’ of flows. The areas ofcontention we have focused on can thus beseen as performances deviating from theofficial urban policy script (see Hubbard,2006). Instead of framing energy transitionand climate change as a locally relevantissue (see Betsill and Bulkeley, 2007), thetensions and conflicts around energy andclimate issues in Stockholm may partlyderive from the lack of connection betweenlocal issues (what matters to people) andthe proposed policy responses, or indeedfrom deviations in the latter. Many peopleare sceptical about the fossil-fuel-free dis-course (its achievability and its usefulness),but concretely it is the transfer of publicfunds from the congestion charge awayfrom public transport to road construction,the continuing use of a ‘dirty’ heating plant,

the profit-maximising strategy of the heat-ing company and the decreasing resourcesfor energy policy work which local actorstalk most about, discuss and contest. Thetensions around budgets and resources, dis-trict heating and the congestion charge sug-gest indeed that any notion of success orgood practice is blunted by a series of trade-offs (emissions reductions for heating pricerises and profits, financing environmentalpolicy by privatising energy provision, regu-lating car use in the city centre but facilitat-ing automobility in the outskirts, etc.).Following the evolving, diverging positions,interests and knowledges of actors (includ-ing the opposing partisan views between theright-wing majority and the green and left-wing opposition), and the relations and(financial and other) flows between them isa way of highlighting both the always-con-tested nature and repercussions of energyand carbon flows in cities and the potentialways in which change might come about(see Stahre, 2004).

Second, this helps to raise the crucialissue of which or whose city is being priori-tised in the formulation, implementationand contestation of energy–climate policy.The types (and implications) of city, urbanenvironment and energy/carbon flowsunderpinning urban life are likely to bequite opposing according to whether one isinterested in promoting a ‘world-class’Stockholm, a ‘fossil-fuel-free city’, or ‘agood place to live’. Following the detailsand the modalities of operationalising theseobjectives and the changes of directionwhich allow politicians to shift resourcesaway from one objective towards other per-haps contradictory ones, foregrounds thesequestions of who is speaking for what kindof city, how (based on, for example, whatinterpretation of which knowledge), whyand with what forms of accountability. Atthe same time, it has been highlighted thatwe need to be aware of the conflicting and




shifting positions of the actors involved—for example, the multipositionality of theCity of Stockholm in the district heatingsystem—who can rarely be groupedtogether or made readily identifiable as ahomogeneous coalition driving urbanenergy–climate policy in one coherentdirection. The lack of a clear division ofresponsibility in some areas (and indeed aclear vision of ‘who is governing what?’)problematises the issue of the extent towhich the municipality can be held accoun-table for its decisions and policy orienta-tions (when ‘the municipality’ is alwaysmultiple).

This kind of ‘messy’ urban energy gov-ernance also implies that it remains whollydebatable the extent to which there is anongoing shift to some kind of new dominant‘green’ urban paradigm wherein sharedgreen values drive environmental issues tostructure or cut across whole urban politicalagendas. It is striking the relatively limitedresources attributed to environmental issueseven in the ‘green capital of Europe’ wheneducation, care and transport still constitutethe main policy priorities (see also Granbergand Elander, 2007). Furthermore, there is apersistent context of compromise and trade-off, also highlighted in previous work on thepolitics of city-building in Stockholm andcities elsewhere (see for example, Le Gales,2002), which results from both the presenceof strong diverging interests (majority,opposition, social groups) and the limits tothe strength and diffusion of green values,and thus to the environmentalisation ofurban policy (when a suburban motorwaycan, for example, be deemed more ‘neces-sary’ than ensuring coherence of actions anddecisions with regard to the ‘fossil-fuel-free’policy).

Third, the Stockholm case illustrates thecentrality of urban materiality to debatesand negotiations over low-carbon and/orenergy efficient urban futures. On a first

level, it shows how climate mitigation dis-course (‘fossil-fuel-free’) becomes con-fronted with the materialities of energy(policy), whether it be technical infrastruc-ture such as networks, plants and roads oreveryday objects like heating bills, boardmeetings and the placards of protesters.The politics of urban transition is here a setof struggles over the evolving, everydaymaterialities and infrastructures that matterto Stockholm citizens.

On another level, however, it suggeststhe need to go beyond materiality solely as(static, fixed) infrastructure/object to a dis-cussion of the dynamics of materialitythrough which transition is elaborated,operated and contested. There is indeed aperformance (or a set of performances) ofurban materiality: work, activity, operationand people generally fulfilling tasks to bothsustain and evolve energy and climate mat-ters, whether it is the work of everydaypolicy implementation or the activity asso-ciated with the organisation of protest andformulation of policy alternatives. Tensionsinherent to energy–climate issues inStockholm do seem to be effectively per-formed through a shifting ‘ordering, circu-lation and manipulation of things’ (Lathamet al., 2009). The City’s emissions graph,the chimney of Vartaverket and the map ofthe by-pass organise certain (linear) flowsand relations, but at the same time each ofthese means different things to differentgroups and can be mobilised to supportdiverging interests. Indeed, it is throughprocesses and practices of disordering anddeflection of linearity that these objectscome to matter: debate over the trajectoryand implications of the emissions graph,protest at the heating plant because of whatcomes out of the chimney, the use of alter-native sources of heating to combat pricerises, contestation over road building andits financing. This suggests that the politicsof urban energy and climate issues emerges




not just over infrastructure and concreteobjects per se, but more specifically in theprocesses of overflowing of these infrastruc-tures and objects, and therefore the ways inwhich urban materiality is inherentlymanipulated through the practices and per-formances of varying groups and interests.

This brings us in turn back to the firstpoint, because this suggests that mappingurban materiality and the politics of thismateriality may be an alternative way of‘counting’ carbon or ‘measuring’ energyflows in cities. Taking into account the mul-tiple flows (of waste emissions, heat, people,money, best practice ideas, etc.) related tourban energy–climate issues and the differentorderings and disorderings through whichthey circulate helps to disrupt the linearpathways which normative transition dis-course proclaims and enacts. Unpacking thediverse and undulating processes throughwhich energy and climate issues come tomatter in the urban arena is thus a usefulmeans of tracing how transition is being per-formed, contested and repoliticised.

6. Conclusion

There has been significant debate over theproposed visions for Stockholm’s future‘green’ development. This debate is capturedby the unresolved question of whether thecity is concretely aiming to be both/eitherfossil-fuel-free by 2050 and/or world-classin 2030, and by the (quite different) meansand resources which are being or could beattributed to working concretely and mate-rially towards these objectives. In unpackingnot just these discursive visions and ideals,but also the more contingent political pro-cesses and tensions through which energy–climate policy is being actually formulated,implemented and contested in Stockholm,this paper has contributed to deepening thelevel of analysis of urban energy–climate

policies. We have gone beyond a simplereaffirmation of both an ‘implementationgap’ between generic, ambitious policy dis-course and actual policy action, and anemerging ecological modernisation agendain which energy–climate policy is seen ascreating new opportunities for urban devel-opment and growth which will inevitablyand automatically contribute to the creationof ‘a world-class city’ in the near future. Thepaper has argued that a core focus on thenitty-gritty politics and everyday strugglesaround urban energy and climate issues is ahighly useful means of grasping how long-term orientations are (materially) translatedhere and now (in diverse ways by diverseurban actors) onto the local political stage.

We have argued that urban energy–climate issues inherently articulate transi-tion, politics and materiality in shifting con-figurations. Transition must be seen as aheterogeneous process replete with (poten-tial for) controversy and contention becausechange inherently operates through a set ofurban materialities, not just represented byinstruments, objects and infrastructuresper se, but more performed by the multiplearrangements, mobilisations and control ofthese things by particular interests andgroups.

While this opens up the potential for arepoliticisation of urban energy and climateissues, it also at the same time poses thepractical question of how municipalitiescan conceive and implement durableenergy and climate policies in a constantlyshifting urban policy context. While energy,environmental issues and carbon manage-ment are sometimes portrayed as centralnow to the whole of urban policy, this mustbe nuanced by the still relatively limitedresources actually attributed to green issuesin many municipalities. This means thatmore often than not they need to be insymphony with other policies, needs andinterests (as with the current ‘green growth’




agenda). When they conflict too much withmore important priorities, they may be by-passed, reconfigured or even abandoned (asin the case of the financing of climate-neutral public transport from the congestioncharge in Stockholm). These moments ofthe ‘unfixing’ of environment–energy–cli-mate priorities are important because theyreveal the logic of reversibility which seemsto dominate current policy in this field. Thisbrings us back to changing notions of mate-riality and transition because the Stockholmcase suggests that policy oriented towardsembedding path dependencies in the formof major physical infrastructure projectsmay be increasingly contested as it materia-lises a fixed, singular pathway of transition.More reflexive and adaptable policy isincreasingly demanded, which might takeinto account more open notions of material-ity and transition as explored in this paper.The question that remains unclear though ishow to mobilise more diverse ideas of urbanmateriality and urban change to constructstable, longer-term actions for energy andclimate issues which would prove to be dur-able and resilient in the face of threats ofdiversion of policy attention and resourcesto other short-term needs.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the helpful and constructive com-ments from two referees, and from participantsat the ‘Urban Transitions in Comparison’ inter-national symposium in Durham (March, 2012)organised by Harriet Bulkeley and Simon Guyand at the ‘Managing the Green Cities’ seminarin Shanghai (December, 2011) organised byDominique Lorrain at which earlier versions ofthis paper were presented. Camille Gillet pro-vided research assistance in Stockholm during2010.

Funding

This research was funded by the Foresight section(Mission Prospective) of the French Ministry of

Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development(MEEDDM) and the French Agency for theEnvironment and Energy Efficiency (ADEME) aspart of their joint ‘Rethinking cities in a post-carbon society’ programme.

Notes

1. The empirical research on which theStockholm analysis draws was conductedbetween 2008 and 2011 and took the formof in-depth analysis of policy documents,reports and other secondary material, sup-plemented by a series of semi-structuredinterviews with more than 30 local officialsfrom the municipality, regional and statebodies, energy companies and environmen-tal associations.

2. The reasons given for Stockholm being des-ignated European Green Capital 2010included: the presence within the munici-pality of an integrated administrativesystem that guarantees that environmentalaspects are considered in budgets, opera-tional planning, reporting and monitoring;its success in reducing carbon dioxide emis-sions since 1990; and its adoption of anambitious objective of being fossil-fuel-freeby 2050 (City of Stockholm, 2010b).

3. ‘Reduced climate impact’ and ‘a good builtenvironment’ constitute two of the 16 envi-ronmental quality objectives adopted by theSwedish Parliament (Swedish EnvironmentalProtection Agency, 2011). The ‘integratedclimate and energy policy’ outlined in twogovernment bills in March 2009 has set outa ‘national roadmap’ for 2050 with an over-all aim for Sweden to be ‘an emissions-neu-tral country by 2050’ (Swedish Government,2008a, 2008b, 2011a). This translates into anumber of interim targets for 2020 which asa whole go beyond EU objectives: 40 percent reduction in climate emissions (on1990 levels); 50 per cent of energy use tocome from renewable energy sources; 20 percent more efficient energy use; and 10 percent use of renewable energy in the transportsector. Action plans focused on renewableenergy, energy efficiency and a fossil-fuel-free transport sector have been, or are in the




process of being, initiated to work towardsthese targets (Swedish Government, 2010,2011b; Profu, 2012). The current govern-ment (like a high proportion of the popula-tion) is also in favour of continued use ofnuclear power in electricity production, thusreversing the 1980 decision to phase outSweden’s existing reactors. The governmentsees win–win opportunities for the economyand the environment from working towardsits energy and climate objectives

Investment in renewable energy and more

efficient energy use are strengthening

Sweden’s competitiveness and putting

Swedish research and Swedish enterprises

at the forefront of the global climate tran-

sition. We are laying the foundations for

new innovations, new enterprises and

new jobs in green industries of the future

(Swedish Government, 2009).

4. The 2009 energy bill mentions ‘voluntaryagreements’ between central governmentand local authorities on energy efficiencyobjectives, as well as the need for municipa-lities to identify ‘appropriate sites’ for windpower in their planning documents(Swedish Government, 2008b, p. 149). The2009 climate bill mentions the proposalmade by the Climate Advisory Council thatmunicipal comprehensive plans shouldhave to show how they contribute to emis-sions reductions objectives (SwedishGovernment, 2008a, p. 131).

5. These goals are also quite coherent withthose of regional planning which promotesreductions in energy consumption (throughenergy efficiency measures) and a transitionto renewable energy sources(Regionplanekontoret, 2010).

6. This is a comprehensive plan—i.e. a steer-ing document and not legally binding forlocal detailed plans which officially regulatenew building, renovations and extensions(City of Stockholm, 2010e, p. 3).

7. Indeed, the City of Stockholm took out afull page advertisement in Dagens Nyheternewspaper in December 2009 to ‘advertise’

‘‘a world-class environmental city’’ (City ofStockholm, 2011b, p. 19).

8. These funds representing around a billionkronor (almost 100 million euros) for envi-ronmental projects in Stockholm between2004 and 2009 came into being after thesale of the municipal energy company toFortum in 2002 (City of StockholmEnvironment Department official, inter-view, May 2009). We should note that thissale generated 14.5 billion kronor (seeRutherford, 2008), so actually only around7 per cent of this money was directed to theenvironment. Interviewees alleged that theremainder was used for various buildingand infrastructure projects, but also as ameans of avoiding increasing municipaltaxes.

9. These figures are extracted from budgetreports on the City of Stockholm website.

10. In 2007, the new Moderate majority alsotook the decision to transfer 165 millionkronor from the Environmental Billion fundswhich was planned to be used for biogasprojects to the City’s Traffic and WasteManagement Committee for road mainte-nance (City of Stockholm, 2011a, p. 2).

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