Ikea a local link to Sweden’s fight against climate change
Sweden is on a trajectory to become the world’s first fossil-free state. The Climate Act adopted by the Riksdag, its legislature, a year ago stipulates net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045.
The Swedish Climate Act is the world’s most ambitious such law, according to the think tank Forum for Reforms, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability.
For Sweden, there is no way around “ambitious.” According to the Special Report by the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, issued last fall, the impact and costs of climate change will be far greater than expected. Limiting the global rise in temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius by 2020 as nations pledged in the 2015 Paris climate agreement is dangerously inching toward unrealistic. The report said that we have only 12 years to entirely rewire and wean our economies off carbonintensive fossil fuels, with no vehicles on the road powered by diesel or gas.
Sweden’s Climate Act has set our nation on a path to reduce emissions from domestic transport by at least 70 percent by 2030 compared to the 2010 emission levels.
The climate thinking is wellrooted also in Swedish industry, which has a tradition of growing business in sustainable ways. As Ikea opens its doors in Live Oak today, yet another urban hub can avail itself to the retailer’s sustainable products and services. Ikea has switched its entire lighting range to energyefficient LED, and its cotton and wood sourcing to sustainable purveyors. The furniture giant is also on track to do all home deliveries by electric vehicles by 2025 and provides charging stations for electrical vehicles for customers and employees.
Additionally, Ikea has committed $1 billion to climate action projects.
In his “Testament of a Furniture Dealer,” Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad (1956-2018) listed simplicity as a virtue and waste as a sin. Similar thinking has a foothold among Swedish consumers. Swedes recycle nearly 100 percent of their household waste — separating newspapers, plastic, metal, glass, electric appliances, batteries and food waste — and duly deliver it to nearby recycling stations.
Sweden even imports waste from other countries and uses it for biogas to power local transport. The waste-to-energy concept makes it worthwhile not to waste.
Stabilizing the climate requires efforts by government, business and the consumer. The processes that nations need to adopt to deliver on the Paris agreement were clarified at the COP24 Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in December.
Sweden is eager to share its experiences and know-how with other nations to help scale climate actions and keep climate change within safe boundaries.
The opening of Ikea in Live Oak is an important step in tackling change, and I am proud to be involved by having my deputy chief, Göran Lithell, on site.