Introduction

The City of Växjö (southern Sweden) is moving closer towards the vision of zero emissions

Objectives and target audience

What was the project trying to achieve? Who was the project targeted at (if applicable)?
In the City of Växjö, the emissions of fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) shall decrease by 70 percent per capita until 2025, compared to 1993, and the long-term vision is a totally fossil fuel free Växjö.

Financial Resources and Partners involved

Please give an overview of the budget, and an outline of the funders.
Which organisations were involved in shaping and delivering the project.
Since Fossil Fuel Free Växjö is a programme covering everyone and everything within the geographical borders of Växjö, and is all the time supplemented with new actions, it is not possible to define a budget or total costs for it. Therefore it is also difficult to say the total amount or share of national or international contribution, except for some specific projects.

The Fossil Fuel Free Växjö programme was worked out through intensive dialogue with local NGOs, companies, the university and citizens. In 2007, a local climate commission was started, in order to identify actions that needed to be carried out to reach the goal. The commission consisted of representatives from politicians, city administration, Växjö University, Växjö Energy Ltd, Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden, and three companies.

Process

In 1997, the Government of Sweden announced that they would allocate around 600 million € to local environmental investments. This turned out to be a good opportunity to gather local actors to different thematic dialogues to discuss; a) what kind of projects could be part of Växjö’s Local Investment Programme, and b) what actions would be implemented in a local Agenda 21 strategy. This was the start of the drafting of a local action plan for a Fossil Fuel Free Växjö which mainly focused on the following areas:

• Renewable heating and cooling
• Renewable power production
• Efficient use of energy
• Renewable fuels for transport
• Reduced climate impact of transport

Växjö’s strategy for a change to a fossil fuel free community has comprised a combination of changed behaviour, energy efficiency, and transition to renewable energy in heating, power and transport.

Results

CO2 results
Thanks to all the actions mentioned above, the result is so far a reduction of 32 percent until 2007. However, one should remember that 32 percent wouldn’t be so much if Växjö wouldn’t have done anything before 1993; but the CO2 levels were low already in 1993. In 2007, the emissions were 3,131 kg per capita in Växjö, compared to 4,630 kg per capita in 1993. This means that already in 1993, Växjö had less emission level per capita than Sweden has today.

Energy results
Växjö is supplied by about 2,400 GWh in 2007. Transport, heating and power is supplied by roughly one third each. Of all the energy, 54 percent comes from renewable energy sources, 35 percent comes from fossil fuels and the rest is non-renewable power, mainly nuclear power imported from other parts of Sweden.

Socio-economic results
It is impossible to quantify the savings of money due to the Fossil Fuel Free Växjö programme. But one interesting thing we can see in Växjö is that the economic development did in no way suffer from the city’s shift to biomass-based energy.

Critical Success Factors / Challenges

The first, and probably the most important one, is the political commitment and political unity. All political parties agree that environmental issues, not at least the ones concerning climate change, are very important
The second aspect is the broad cooperation. The Fossil Fuel Free Växjö programme was worked out through intensive dialogue with local NGOs, companies, the university and citizens. In 2007, a local climate commission was started, in order to identify actions that needed to be carried out to reach the goal. The commission consisted of representatives from politicians, city administration, Växjö University, Växjö Energy Ltd, Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden, and three companies.
The third aspect is financing. Växjö has managed to receive funds for many of the actions carried out here. Some of it has come from the national Government, some of it from European Union.