Why partnering India in the green transition matters even to this Swedish government

Next week, Sweden’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ebba Busch, will attend the India Sweden Innovation Day in Stockholm in person for the first time, showing that India’s green transition matters even to her less-than-green government, writes The Local’s Nordic Editor Richard Orange.

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After leaving it to Sweden’s infrastructure minister last year and appearing via a video link in 2022, this year Busch hopped in at the last minute, confirming only last week that she would attend. 

On the face of it, her eagerness to take part is strange.
The conference is dominated by environmental policy and in particular by the green industrial transition. The theme is “Accelerating Green Growth for Inclusive Transition” and the moderator is Arati Davis, who heads Business Co-Development at LeadIT, the initiative to promote the global decarbonisation of heavy industry India and Sweden were appointed to lead in 2019. 
And the government where Busch serves as Business and Energy minister can hardly count as green.

The decision to sharply reduce and then scrap the biofuels obligation and slash tax on petrol and diesel has put Sweden on track to miss both its national and EU emissions goals, even even after they decided to bring it back at a lower rate next year.

The decision to cut the subsidy for electric cars as soon as the government came contributed to a slump in sales.

The decision to launch a whole new inquiry on removing the obstacles to onshore windfarms, rather than enact proposals already submitted to the former government, has meant that municipalities in Sweden still receive few incentives to host wind farms on their territories, leading them to veto the overwhelming majority. 

The decision to make offshore wind parks pay for their own grid connections at sea led Vattenfall, Sweden’s state-owned power company, to in September pause development of its biggest offshore wind project, Kriegers Flak, potentially depriving people in southern Sweden of 2.7 TWh of fossil-free electricity per year. 

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Busch would protest that her government’s decision to reorient energy policy around the development of a new generation of nuclear power stations, even if they won’t be built until the 2030s, will in the long run provide more secure supplies of fossil-fuel free power. 
But the government’s regressive actions on the national stage have in fact never stopped ministers promoting Sweden as a green champion internationally, particularly a champion of the green industrial transition. 
One of the first public acts of Benjamin Dousa, Sweden’s new trade and aid minister, was to welcome Stegra, the new green steel plant currently under construction in Boden, Northern Sweden, into LeadIT at a meeting in New York. 
Sweden launched its EU presidency by flying Brussels journalists to northern Sweden to show off some the ambitious flagship projects for Sweden’s green industrial transition.  During the EU presidency, it managed to get the Fit for 55 climate package over the line, bringing in one of the world’s largest and most ambitious climate packages.
At COP-28 in Dubai, Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson launched LeadIT 2.0 alongside India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, renewing the partnership project and signing up to deliver tangible results by the time of the COP-30 climate summit in Brazil next year. 
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There is a lot of prestige attached to these projects and India and Sweden’s role in promoting the green transition internationally. For India and Sweden, it’s a win-win. India can share some of Sweden’s credentials as a green pioneer, while Sweden gets to deepen its political relationship with one of the world’s biggest markets, and one that is growing ever more important at a time when European companies are worried about China’s protectionist and mercantilist approach. 
Alongside the big industrial companies that are involved in LeadIT, the conference is also being attended by the India head of the furniture giant Ikea. 
But the prestige Sweden has on the green transitions stems ultimately from the bold projects launched by Swedish companies like steel company SSAB, iron ore miner LKAB, car battery producer Northvolt, and the cement company Cementa. They have been among the first big companies globally to start the ball rolling on decarbonising hard-to-abate industries. 
The risk for Sweden is that these ambitious green industrial projects, rather than being success stories end up turning into fiascos and that Sweden goes from being an example of what is possible in the green industrial transition to a warning of the risks of moving too fast. 
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This may already be starting to happen with the crisis at the battery company Northvolt, which came into the open in September, with redundancies announced for more than a thousand people. 
The government seems to have decided that however much a source of pride Sweden’s giant green industrial projects may be, they are not worth keeping afloat with government subsidies. Busch again this week ruled out “massive state support” to keep Northvolt afloat, warning of the risk of “throwing good money after bad”. 
Taking part in India Sweden Innovation Day offers her the chance to once again champion the green industrial transition, even if that support does not stretch to hard cash.
Politics in Sweden is The Local’s weekly analysis, guide or look ahead to what’s coming up in Swedish politics. Update your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. 

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After leaving it to Sweden’s infrastructure minister last year and appearing via a video link in 2022, this year Busch hopped in at the last minute, confirming only last week that she would attend. 
On the face of it, her eagerness to take part is strange.
The conference is dominated by environmental policy and in particular by the green industrial transition. The theme is “Accelerating Green Growth for Inclusive Transition” and the moderator is Arati Davis, who heads Business Co-Development at LeadIT, the initiative to promote the global decarbonisation of heavy industry India and Sweden were appointed to lead in 2019. 
And the government where Busch serves as Business and Energy minister can hardly count as green.
Busch would protest that her government’s decision to reorient energy policy around the development of a new generation of nuclear power stations, even if they won’t be built until the 2030s, will in the long run provide more secure supplies of fossil-fuel free power. 
But the government’s regressive actions on the national stage have in fact never stopped ministers promoting Sweden as a green champion internationally, particularly a champion of the green industrial transition. 
One of the first public acts of Benjamin Dousa, Sweden’s new trade and aid minister, was to welcome Stegra, the new green steel plant currently under construction in Boden, Northern Sweden, into LeadIT at a meeting in New York. 
Sweden launched its EU presidency by flying Brussels journalists to northern Sweden to show off some the ambitious flagship projects for Sweden’s green industrial transition.  During the EU presidency, it managed to get the Fit for 55 climate package over the line, bringing in one of the world’s largest and most ambitious climate packages.
At COP-28 in Dubai, Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson launched LeadIT 2.0 alongside India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, renewing the partnership project and signing up to deliver tangible results by the time of the COP-30 climate summit in Brazil next year. 
There is a lot of prestige attached to these projects and India and Sweden’s role in promoting the green transition internationally. For India and Sweden, it’s a win-win. India can share some of Sweden’s credentials as a green pioneer, while Sweden gets to deepen its political relationship with one of the world’s biggest markets, and one that is growing ever more important at a time when European companies are worried about China’s protectionist and mercantilist approach. 
Alongside the big industrial companies that are involved in LeadIT, the conference is also being attended by the India head of the furniture giant Ikea. 
But the prestige Sweden has on the green transitions stems ultimately from the bold projects launched by Swedish companies like steel company SSAB, iron ore miner LKAB, car battery producer Northvolt, and the cement company Cementa. They have been among the first big companies globally to start the ball rolling on decarbonising hard-to-abate industries. 
The risk for Sweden is that these ambitious green industrial projects, rather than being success stories end up turning into fiascos and that Sweden goes from being an example of what is possible in the green industrial transition to a warning of the risks of moving too fast. 
This may already be starting to happen with the crisis at the battery company Northvolt, which came into the open in September, with redundancies announced for more than a thousand people. 
The government seems to have decided that however much a source of pride Sweden’s giant green industrial projects may be, they are not worth keeping afloat with government subsidies. Busch again this week ruled out “massive state support” to keep Northvolt afloat, warning of the risk of “throwing good money after bad”. 
Taking part in India Sweden Innovation Day offers her the chance to once again champion the green industrial transition, even if that support does not stretch to hard cash.
Politics in Sweden is The Local’s weekly analysis, guide or look ahead to what’s coming up in Swedish politics. Update your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox.