The Ministry of Enterprise

When examining similarities between US and Swedish sustainability practices, a skeptic might point to the different structures of corporate ownership that are prevalent in Sweden. The Swedish Government owns more than 50 large companies, including $25BB energy producer Vattenfall, V&S (producer of Absolut Vodka,) and the global bank Nordea with almost a half a trillion dollars in assets under management. While the US Government has arguably been trundling in this direction, Sweden far outpaces the US in terms of government ownership of their economy.

When it comes to providing clear and transparent reporting of the performance of those companies, the buck stops with Jenny Didong at the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy, and Communications.
"One of our big improvements for this year was adding clear guidelines for sustainability reporting among government-owned enterprise," said Jenny. "In fact, over 90% of state-owned companies reported on their sustainability goals and measures; only 15% of listed companies did similarly!"

There is a great expression from renowned strategies Peter Drucker: "What gets measured gets done." By truly 'walking the walk' of sustainability metrics by making their state-owned companies set an example, Sweden really is setting the bar high for publicly-owned and private companies both in Sweden and globally.

An excellent, shiny PDF on their work is available here: http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/133089