Climate Neutral Nordic
The Initiative Climate Neutral Nordic is a joint venture between Nordic governments and Nordic businesses.
Nordic collaboration to become the worlds most sustainable and integrated region
The Initiative Climate Neutral Nordic is a joint venture between Nordic governments and businesses. Together we aim to strengthen Nordic competitiveness and contribute to making the Nordic region the most sustainable and integrated region in the world.
To realize this vision it is vital that the Nordic countries collaborate to establish itself as a testbed for new technology, innovations and businessmodels.
The initiative Climate Neutral Nordics goal is to lead the region towards increased sustainability by influencing policy and highlight rapid actions to face the climate challenges.
The project was launched in 2021 with an interview study among leading businesses in the Nordics on raised climate ambitions. The study shows that Nordic business leaders are concerned about climate change and its consequences and expressed the need to ramp up climate actions. All of the CEOs regarded climate change as a threat. Nordic companies can play a key role in delivering climate solutions worldwide and help their customers and countries to align with the 1.5°C target.
The 40 interviewed business leaders representing companies with approximately 1.2 million employees across the globe. The aggregated revenue of the companies is around 326 billion EUR, corresponding to approximately 24 percent of the GDP of the Nordic region.
Nordic businesses have the potential to play a leading role by delivering climate friendly solutions globally and help customers and countries by adapting to the 1,5°C target.
Nordic CEOs want:
Navigating the Voluntary Carbon removal market
The scenarios aligning with the Paris-agreement targets are vastly depending on the large-scale implementation of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions to remove CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere.
The Nordic countries have an unique opportunity to be a frontrunner in building fullscale valuechains for CDR-activites and to deliver CDR-credits to the international market.
Unsplash/Anne Nygard
In October 2023 Skift and Zero organized a webinar about carbon removal credits in the voluntary market.
Insights from the webinar have been summarized in a policy paper. In the paper we give an overview over the potential for CDR, status for the policies and announced projects in the Nordic countries, and discuss the potential for further collaboration.
CO2-removal in the Nordic countries
The Nordic countries have the possibility to take on a leadership role in developing and deploying CDR technologies, due to large forest areas, many bio-based industries, large capacities to store CO2 in underground reservoirs and relevant technological environments. CO2-removal is a priority in the Nordic political agenda, and there are ongoing political discussions and ongoing CDR-projects in all the Nordic countries.
It exists a vast potential for CO2-removal in the Nordic, both through technological and nature-based solutions. If successful, the Nordic can play a key-role internationally by developing technology and reduce the costs connected to the implementation av such solutions globally.
This indicates that there is potential for cross-boarder collaboration, aiming at reducing costs and increase the total volume of CO2-removal.
Based on a webinar with Nordic stakeholders in October 2022, Skift and Zero have explored the potential for CO2-removal in the Nordic and summarized the findings in a policy paper.
Carbon capture and storage on waste incineration
The Nordic countries share a common market when it comes to waste and can therefore benefit from a common approach and collaboration between waste facilities which plans on implement CCS. Stakeholders from the waste industry meets the same challenges when it comes to investments in CCS and parallel running of the business.
The Nordic countries are ideal for CCS and technologies for carbon removal due to the availability of storage possibilities and the presence of relevant researchers and businesses.
There are many policies and business models for CCS available within the waste industry in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, either as already existing policy or planned initiatives. Amongst these there are possibly three with potential for collaboration and establishment with cross border facilities on a Nordic level: reverse auctions, CO2-tax on the fossil part of emissions or extended producer responsibility for waste.
In December 2021, Skift and Zero held a webinar discussing the possibilities to scale up CCS-technology on waste incineration in the Nordic. The insights from this webinar have been summarized in a policy paper.
About Climate Neutral Nordics
Climate Neutral Nordic is a collaboration between the three Nordic business networks Hagainitiativet (SE), Climate Leadership Coalition (FI), and Skift - Business Climate Leaders (NO). Over a period of four years, the partners are working on 10 different projects, aiming at bringing business perspectives to the Nordic debate on climate change, green competitiveness, and innovation. The projects have funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers.