Meeting Malmö’s ambitious climate goals

Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, has successfully reinvented itself. From an industrial city, it has turned into one of knowledge and culture. It has achieved further prosperity with the construction of the Öresund bridge road, railway and tunnel project, linking Malmö to Copenhagen and to European rail lines.

With the Turning Torso – the architectural structure overlooking the city skyline – facing the world as a symbol of openness, Malmö is a progressive city that has been making diversity and sustainability its key characteristics.

Malmö has made bold moves to set increasingly ambitious targets over the years. While the city’s official target aims for a 70 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 from 1970 levels, the city has recently signed an ambitious Climate City Contract with the Swedish government through a partnership with Viable Cities, to become carbon-neutral by 2030. The commitment has been further crystalised through the city’s selection to join the European Commission’s Cities Mission to be one of the 100 European cities to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of the decade.

Action plan

Meeting these climate goals is no small undertaking. As Trevor Graham, Senior Climate Advisor at the City of Malmö, says: “We cut our emissions by 40 percent from 1990 to 2020, so it means that in the next seven and a half years we have to do as much as in the past 30 years. That’s just to get our heads around it. We clearly are on a positive trajectory, but the issue of speed and intensity is a real challenge.”

In this case study, Trevor Graham and his fellow expert Anna Roslund paint a picture of how Malmö is accelerating its climate action using innovative collaborations. Explore the city’s transition and its upcoming challenges, the markers of its transformation and the configuration of its climate action plan.