How much can you fit in a week, really? We have dug deep into emission factors and calorific values this week, discussed sustainability in the IT sector, citizens’ salaries and baking bread in Fellingsbro as a path to happiness in life, eaten excellent candy from Ockelbo, held our breath over the world’s largest iceberg’s worrying journey towards South Georgia and pondered whether or not to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement. We’re not doing that well after all.
Yesterday was the last day to submit comments on the European Commission’s proposal on the Taxonomy, you know the regulations that will define what we in Europe consider to be green investments. Criticism from Sweden have been, among other things, about bioenergy being seen as a transitional activity and that hydropower for various reasons is runnning the risk of being classified as unsustainable.
Why is this important? Well, because it is the Taxonomy that will give the financial sector its guidelines for which investments are environmentally sustainable. And it is needed. The large Swedish paper DN reported on Thursday that public funds continue to invest in fossil investments. Sometimes you might tend to believe that we are already on our way out of the fossil society, but nothing can be more wrong. We invest heavily in coal, oil and fossil gas – several billions of our pension money are invested in fossil companies according to the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation’s report. Taxonomy can help, because with that in effect, fossil investments will be risky. In January, we will meet with the third AP Fund to discuss how they think about their fossil holdings, risk management and their role in a sustainable society. It’s going to be ridiculously exciting.
Because it’s not easy. It’s downright difficult. The other day, we found ourselves deep into unsustainable behavior when we decided to expand our office. Fast and determined as we are, we quickly threw ourselves into ikea.se to make a substantial purchase of office furniture. We almost got ourselves all the way through the buying process before we woke up and realized that we would not buy new furniture at all. The world is full of used office furniture just waiting to be ours. It’s embarrassing to reveal, but I think there are more spinal reflexes than ours that need to be reprogrammed in order to end the buying frenzy in this world. If so, what happens to financial growth and jobs? Yes, that’s where the bread baking in Fellingsbro comes into the picture. We’ll take it another week.
With that, we want to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!
