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Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing: new stats

The Local Sweden
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Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing: new stats
New statistics show a small rise in Sweden's carbon dioxide emissions. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Sweden's carbon dioxide emissions are still on the rise, despite ambitious targets.

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Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions increased last year by half a million tonnes, according to preliminary statistics, putting its total at 63.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.

Sweden's national number crunchers Statistics Sweden presented the statistics on Thursday.

This means that taking into account the growing economy, which has seen a GDP growth of 12 percent since 2014, the emissions level has remained largely unchanged in the past five years.

Sweden's manufacturing industry accounts for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

“While emissions are increasing in some manufacturing sectors, such as the manufacture of paper and printing, manufacture of coke and refineries and chemical production, they are decreasing in other sectors, in particular in steel and metal production,” said Statistics Sweden in a statement.

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Increased use of fossil fuels in early 2018, and colder temperatures compared to 2017, led to a four percent increase of greenhouse gas emissions by the electricity, gas, heat, water and waste industry. Emissions by these sectors amounted to 8.6 million tonnes last year, according to Statistics Sweden.

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has also looked at Sweden's emissions last year, but only taken into account emissions in Sweden, leaving out emissions from international transport.

According to those stats, emissions increased from 52.6 million tonnes in 2017 to 53.1 million tonnes in 2018.

Sweden, home to world-famous climate activist Greta Thunberg and where the Green Party is a member of government, wants to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, but this would require an annual decrease of five to eight percent.

Read the full report by Statistics Sweden (in English) here.

Vocabulary

greenhouse gas – växthusgas

emissions – utsläpp

environment – miljö

carbon dioxide – koldioxid

climate – klimat

We're aiming to help our readers improve their Swedish by translating vocabulary from some of our news stories. Did you find this article useful? Do you have any suggestions? Let us know.

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