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12 - Rethinking the Environmental State: An Economic History of the Swedish Environmental Kuznets Curve for Carbon

from Part II - Cases and Multidisciplinary Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2019

By
Magnus Lindmark
Edited by
Marc Ozawa ,
Jonathan Chaplin ,
Michael Pollitt ,
David Reiner  and
Paul Warde
Marc Ozawa
Affiliation:
Energy Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge
Jonathan Chaplin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Michael Pollitt
Affiliation:
Judge Business School, Cambridge
David Reiner
Affiliation:
Judge Business School, Cambridge
Paul Warde
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

It is important to recognize that macroeconomic conditions and dynamics were important for the design of Swedish energy policy and that the transformation pressure on the Swedish energy system was exceptionally high by international comparison. Historic decisions, which were governed by a rationality fostered by the circumstances in the 1940s and early 1950s, came to form important structures which affected the outcome of the energy policy in the 1970s and 1980s. The perhaps most striking consequence of this was the emergence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve for carbon with few international counterparts. The transformative change of the Swedish energy system included several steps, which in retrospect seem accidental. The challenge today is to copy the sequence, while at the same time realizing that the structures and historical circumstances that brought about a sequence that was historically determined and of a contingent nature cannot easily serve as a ‘copy and paste’ learning example.

Keywords

oil crisisenergyenergy policySwedeneconomic history
Type
Chapter
Information
In Search of Good Energy Policy , pp. 139 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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