Nordics: Climate policies will have an uneven impact across regions

The growing impact of climate change means that mitigation policy is becoming more prominent across the Nordic region. The transition policies that governments enact will have significant economic consequences, and their impact will be felt unevenly across regions. To help organisations understand the implications of different policies, we have developed a range of scenarios which plot potential pathways towards net zero.

What you will learn:

• Carbon-intensive industrial sectors of the economy will bear the brunt of transition costs as economies move towards net zero, and therefore regions which are most dependent on these sectors face the most significant challenges as their economies adjust.
• Regions which are most dependent on these sectors are largely located in northern Sweden and Finland. This greater exposure means that we expect GDP to be furthest away from baseline under our scenarios.
• The Norwegian oil and gas industry is also particularly exposed, although the regional impact of this is less pronounced as most of the activity is recorded offshore. Nevertheless, we still expect Stavanger, the country’s oil capital, to face greater challenges than other parts of the country.
• Capital cities will face a different growth trajectory under each scenario reflecting their unique sectoral composition and inter-regional dependencies.