The graph above illustrates what is undoubtedly one of Sweden's greatest successes in modern economic performance. Over a 16-year period, Sweden has grown their economy by roughly half while simultaneously decreasing their total carbon output by almost 10%, proving that carbon and economic growth are not always linearly correlated.
"Well of course," one might argue, "Sweden has always been obsessed with green." Not so- Sweden used to have the most oil-dependent economy in Europe in the 1970's.
While Sweden may have met huge successes in managing their own sustainability, the focus of today's discussion was on how Sweden was capitalizing on that success around the world. At the Swedish Trade Council's downtown Stockholm office, I met with an articulate and experienced ex-Deloitte consultant and previous head of STC's Chicago office,
Håkan Dahlfors.
"Sweden has built a reputation as a sustainability center- in fact Stockholm is the 2010 EU Green Capital- and turning that success into an export machine is our big goal."
Håkan explained his primary mission- to support and build on the successes of Swedish Cleantech companies exporting abroad. The STC itself is tasked by the Swedish Foreign Ministry (which is its 50% owner, along with a Swedish Industrial Federation) to promote Swedish exports and help them find partners abroad. The Swedish government has wisely placed a special emphasis on exporting Cleantech, which according to SWENTEC- the Swedish Environmental Technology Council- accounted for 33 Billion Swedish Kroner in 2007 exports. This segment's exports were growing at approximately 20% per year in 2007, almost 8% faster than Swedish exports overall. But, as Håkan admits, there is a lot of room to grow- Cleantech only account for 0.2% of Sweden's current exports. Interestingly for those keen on Entrepreneurship: 80% of these companies Håkan works with have 10 employees or less!
From the point of view of the Trade Council, Sweden's advantage stems from a few primary factors. The first is an insistence on a holistic, systems-thinking approach to what is broadly termed sustainability. In the US, much of the focus seems to be on how many LEED buildings we can amass. The Swedes, however, prefer to think of whole cities or even regions as an interacting system that can be tuned for maximum efficiency. Within the seven major sectors of design that require coordination to attain sustainability- Energy, Water, Waste, Transportation, Architecture, Landscape Planning, and Urban Functions- every sector must be part of the conversation to really move the needle. In other words, bolting solar panels onto a new office and calling it "green" doesn't really cut it- all the other major design sectors must also be considered. For example, waste can turn into energy, waste water can turn into fuel, and excessive heat from industry can warm up a household.
Another advantage is the wide use of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP.) In the US, these arrangements are gaining popularity, but not yet as popular as they are in Sweden. PPPs allow public entities to take advantage of the technology and efficiency of profit-driven companies to provide "product" to their citizens.
There are some limitations to the direct applications of this approach to be aware of. In Sweden, the municipality is a much stronger political being than in North America. Sweden also has a much more "collectivized" (or, some might use the dirty word socialized) system in general- as many as 50% of homes in Sweden get their hot water from city heating systems. Municipalities also have immense political and economic freedom to experiment with new methods and be held accountable.
Finally, Håkan explained some of the primary methods that STC uses to describe the value proposition of Swedish Technology abroad. The first is through the use of compelling marketing platforms like SymbioCity, which builds on a concept developed in 2002 by a group of Royal Academy scientists and presented at the UN's Johannesburg Summit on Sustainability. In a nutshell, this platform embodies the most advanced thinking about cities as the basic building blocks of sustainability systems (rather than nations, at a high level, or individual structures at a low level.) Using this platform, STC employs another method which involves sending delegations of companies, political groups, and stakeholders abroad. These trade delegations are fairly traditional, except that at STC they usually involve a wide variety of participants from the public and private sectors both in Sweden and the visiting country. In this way, potential partners get to meet their equivalents on both sides of the table and highlight best practices in a collegial fashion.
That's it for the first day- I've kept it fairly high-level, so please comment with any desire for more detail (or less!)
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