EU Tracker – Local heating and cooling planning in Sweden
Summary
What is the status of the transposition of Art 25.6(EDD) and its implementation ?
Sweden is partially ready for the EED article 25.6 provision, which will require a clearer legal framework and strengthened support mechanisms for municipalities.
Sweden has established practices of local energy planning since the late 1970s, triggered by the oil crisis, with a relatively extensive technical support framework in place for energy planning. While municipalities must outline energy supply, distribution, and utilisation in their plans, alignment with climate and energy goals remains voluntary. Municipalities are highly reliant on external contractors to prepare their energy plans, and access to energy-related geodata could be improved.
Detailed assessment
The legal framework and the obligations
The current obligation for energy planning lacks explicit references for heating and cooling and often alignment to other spatial planning documents and climate targets.
Overview of the legal frameworks per governance level in Finland
| National | The Act on Municipal Energy Planning (1977:439) was signed in 1977 in the wake of the oil crisis and was amended in 2017. It obliges every municipality to have a plan for the supply, distribution, and use of energy and promote energy security, efficiency, and security. Specific responsibilities for local authorities related to energy planning are defined across numerous legislation other than the Act on Municipal Energy Planning, including the Electricity Act (1997:857), District Heating Act (2008:263), District Cooling Act (2022:3232), and the Swedish Planning and Building Act (2010:900). The Climate Act (2017:720), which sets targets and responsibilities for the government to reduce emissions to 85 % below 1990s levels in 2045 (LULUCF sectors excluded), does not define responsibilities for energy and climate planning for local authorities. Neither does it outline their roles in fulfilling the national climate targets. Measures concerning heating or cooling planning are not defined in the draft for an updated national Energy and Climate plan (NECP) submitted in 2023. |
| Regional | The County Administrative board is responsible for supervising the execution of climate and energy related planning activities at the local level, occasionally assuming a coordinating role. Some Swedish counties have developed climate and energy strategies. |
| Local | The scope and ambition of local energy planning differ among Swedish municipalities and are dependent on local council priorities. This mirrors the voluntary nature of municipal climate action in Sweden. Targets to reduce emissions from heating are generally covered by the energy plans, but they rarely contain detailed spatial assessments and strategies. Cooling is meanwhile rarely addressed. The energy plan must however include an impact assessment of its environmental, health, land-use, water, and resource implications. Municipal councils are responsible for approving their energy plan, which is often developed either by or in coordination with utility companies, or with other municipalities and affected parties. Swedish municipalities are encouraged to use their energy plans to guide strategic aspects in spatial planning and other documents, and they have in some cases voluntarily been integrated. |
The support framework
A developed support framework for local energy planning which needs to be strengthened for integrated and strategic heating and cooling plans.
Swedish municipalities have, owing to the country’s long tradition of local energy planning, access to a relatively extensive technical guidance to develop energy plans. Financial support is however relatively limited and fragmented, and often rely on municipalities’ own budgets. Larger municipalities usually have dedicated staff for energy and climate planning, while smaller municipalities often rely on external contractors and regional energy agencies for support. The accessibility to energy-related geodata is currently limited by ownership issues and lack of harmonisation. The support framework would need to be reinforced and readjusted to cover the provisions in the EED article 25.6 for heating and cooling planning and better integrated with other spatial planning documents and climate mitigation targets.
Provided Support
| Technical and organisational | 4/5 | Technical and organisational support for energy and climate planning in general is relatively well-developed but not sufficiently oriented towards heating and cooling planning. The Swedish Energy Agency has developed and collected guidance material for the development of local energy plans. The agency has also provided knowledge sources for local and regional authorities on how energy and climate aspects can be strategically addressed in spatial planning. Additional guidance for municipalities has been developed regionally, for instance by the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland County aiming to improve their integration with other spatial planning documents and their alignment to energy and climate targets. Swedish municipalities also receive support from various collaborative networks in their development of local climate roadmaps, including the Climate Municipalities and the Viable Cities (aligned to the EU Cities Mission) networks. |
| Financial | 3/5 | There is no dedicated long-term financial support for Swedish municipalities to draft energy plans. A study published in 2022 identified that constrained budgetary means for local administrations has negatively impacted their engagement in strategic energy planning, which often is founded through their own budgets and may hence be deprioritised. However, Funding to support emission reduction and energy efficiency measures is provided by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s through Klimatklivet. Moreover, municipalities and regions often work strategically to allocate EU funding to energy-related projects with the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova), which offers support and coordination in this endeavour. |
| Staff & skills | 3/5 | The staff and skills capacities vary depending on the size of the municipality. Larger municipalities have dedicated staff that can develop the plan themselves, while smaller ones are often dependent on external consultants. Municipalities can also hire staff for the drafting of local energy plans through regional energy agencies. |
| Access to data | 2/5 | Improved access to energy data through practice and regulation would facilitate for Swedish municipalities the drafting of heating and cooling plans. While lacking a dedicated platform, energy demand data for households and industries are collected and made available by Statistics Sweden. The Energy Agency provides statistical and system support for utilising this data for scenario analysis and planning, which however is not sufficiently detailed for local heat planning purposes. More granular data on buildings is not readily available for local authorities and may be provided upon request unless the buildings are owned or have been sold by publicly owned housing companies. Municipalities owning energy companies can provide heating supply data, while private energy companies offer such data on a voluntary basis. Data on the technical and economic potential of renewables is often provided through consultancy services. |
