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This article provides a sectoral innovation system perspective of the development of energy efficient and clean process technologies in the Swedish pulp and paper industry. Specifically, the analysis elaborates the importance of knowledge development, actor networks, and institutions (including policy) for progressing and diffusing novel technologies related to energy use. The empirical analysis also sheds light on how significant changes in the sectoral innovation system have influenced the relevant research, development and demonstration activities in the Swedish pulp and paper industry over the period 1970–2010. The results are based on various sources—e.g., industry magazines, reports from industrial consultants and associations, minutes from meetings—and illustrate the importance of well-functioning innovation systems for successful technological development and diffusion processes. They display, in particular, the importance of joint, industry-wide R&D activities, trust-based state—industry relationships, government R&D expenditures, and intense information sharing. One important implication is that the role of policy stretches beyond the funding of basic R&D. Policy also involves measures that strengthen existing actor networks, build competence, and secure the existence of research institutes that provide a bridge between basic knowledge generation (at the universities) on the one hand, and industrial application on the other. ; Validerad;2020;Nivå 2;2020-09-14 (alebob)

Housing plays an important role in the development of welfare policies and also often in achieving sustainability goals. There exists, however, implementation gaps between policies and practices in urban development and housing. Here it should be possible to draw lessons from policy implementations in the past. In this article we explore the strategies of the Swedish central government in implementing a social housing policy in the mid-20th century. The policy was successfully implemented in that it resulted in the rapid expansion and modernisation of the Swedish apartment stock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and acute housingshortages and poor housing standards were overcome. The main lesson learned from the Swedish case study is the critical role of the central government in implementation through the strategic coordination of policy aims, instruments, stakeholders and interests throughout the implementation process. Although the central government could have used hard, almost authoritarian policy instruments to force the realisation of the new policy, it mainly used soft policy tools and focused on coordination. In the contemporary networked governance setting, the central government, like no other player, still has the potential to guide and coordinate implementation processes for the realization of sustainable housing visions.

Godkänd; 2013; Bibliografisk uppgift: 3rd European Conference on Politics and Gender, 21-23 march 2013, Barcelona: Papers of section 'Power and Representation', Panel session S4. ; 20130527 (ysko)

The pulp and paper industry (PPI) has historically caused serious water pollution and offensive fumes and therefore peak the environmental agenda in virtually every nation with such production. Serious pressure on the pulp and paper industry to reduce emissions started in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and was driven by new regulatory frameworks, public debates and changing market preferences, such as a new demand for chlorine free paper products on the European market in the 1990s. For any polluting industry technology is at the very core of the challenge of reducing the environmental impact, and this has been the case also for the PPI. Technological strategies and timing for investments have differed between countries and regions depending on the different institutional environments, organizational solutions and market demand characteristics. In the chapter we will focus on the Swedish PPI from the late 1960s until today, and discuss how the interplay between regulatory- and market/opinion pressure, technology development and environmental performance has evolved. We will also include the development of energy technology in our analysis, which before the 1990s was not distinctly connected to environmental concerns. The Swedish development will be partly contrasted to the parallel Finnish and North American development, mainly from an institutional and technology development perspective, and we will focus on explanations to the differing development paths. The chapter constitutes a synthesis of a longstanding research collaboration of Bergquist and Söderholm with focus on the environmental and energy technology strategies of the Swedish PPI. The comparative analyses of the Swedish and North American, respectively Finnish development is however previously partly unpublished. When it comes to the source materials used for these earlier publications concerning the Swedish case, we have primarily used board minutes (from individual companies as well as from industry organizations on the environment and energy), annual reports, trade journals, environmental licensing documents and interviews with representatives of the industry as well as government agencies. Concerning the comparative analyzes, including with North America and Finland, those have so far mainly been based on literature studies. The Swedish-Finnish comparison will however be supplemented by interviews. ; Godkänd; 2015; 20151210 (krisod)

This paper explores industry strategies to accomplish energy transition in the wake of the Oil Crisis in 1973 with the Swedish pulp and paper sector in the 1970s and the 1980s as case study. Over this period the use of fossil fuels was reduced by 70 percent within the sector. The lion's share of this reduction was achieved by the substitution of oil by biofuels. Besides cutting the costs of energy this substitution also resulted in significant environmental improvements. Substituting oil by biofuels proved to be the overall most reasonable way to decrease the use of oil, even though alternatives such as coal were considered. Initially, oil reductions and energy conservation were accomplished by relatively small measures, but there was a great need for long-term R&D to push the technology development further. Inter-firm and state-firm collaborations therefore became strategically important. The strategies for substitution further interacted strongly with institutional changes in the energy policy field, the on-going greening of the industry as well as an urgent need to enhance international competitiveness. Our study concludes that the oil crises enforced a more sustainable production in a dynamic way, where government strategies to support and push technology development further played a central role. ; This paper explores strategies to accomplish energy transition in the Swedish pulp and paper industry during the 1970s and the 1980s. In the wake of the first oil crisis in 1973 until the late 1980s, the use of fossil fuels within the sector was reduced by 70 percent. The lion's share of this reduction was achieved by the substitution of biofuels for oil, which, besides cutting the costs of energy also resulted in significant environmental improvements. Substituting biofuels for oil proved to be the overall most reasonable way to decrease the use of oil, even though alternatives such as coal were considered. Initially, oil reductions and energy conservation were accomplished by relatively small measures, but there was a great need for long-term R&D to push the technology development further. Inter-firm and state-firm collaborations therefore became strategically important. The strategies for substitution interacted, however, strongly with institutional changes in the energy area, the ongoing greening of the industry as well as an urgent need to enhance international competitiveness. Our study concludes that the oil crises enforced a more sustainable production in a dynamic way, which, according to our knowledge, has been overlooked in the business history literature so far. ; Godkänd;2015;20140704 (krisod);Konferensartikel i tidskrift;Bibliografisk uppgift: URL: http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHonline/2014/bergquistandsoderholm2.pdf

This paper employs the Swedish pulp and paper sector in the 1970s and 1980s as a case study to explore industry strategies for accomplishing energy transition in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Over this period, the use of fossil fuels was reduced by 70 percent within the sector. The lion's share of the reduction was achieved by the substitution of biofuels for oil. Besides cutting the cost of energy production, this substitution also resulted in significant environmental improvements. Substituting biofuels for oil proved to be the most reasonable way to decrease the use of oil, even though alternatives such as coal were considered. Initially, reductions in oil consumption and improvements in energy conservation were accomplished by relatively small measures, but there was a great need for long-term R&D to push technology development further. Inter-firm and state-firm collaborations therefore became strategically important. The strategies for substitution further interacted strongly with institutional changes in the energy policy field, the ongoing "greening" of the industry, as well as an urgent need to enhance international competitiveness. Our study concludes that the oil crises enforced more sustainable production in a dynamic way, where government strategies to support and push technology development further played a central role.

The experiences of past efforts of industrial pollution control while maintaining competitiveness should be of great value to research and policy practice addressing sustainability issues today. In this article, we analyze the environmental adaptation of the Swedish pulp industry during the period 1970–1990 as illustrated by the sulfite pulp producer Domsjö mill. We investigate how this company managed to adapt to heavy transformation pressure from increasing international competition in combination with strict national environmental regulations during the 1960s to the early 1990s. In line with the so-called Porter hypothesis, the company was able to coordinate the problems that were environmental in nature with activities aiming at production efficiency goals and the development of new products. Swedish environmental agencies and legislation facilitated this ―win-win‖ situation by a flexible but still challenging regulatory approach towards the company. From the early 1990s and onwards, the greening of the pulp industry was also a result of increased market pressure for green paper products.

In this paper, we address the issue of organizational networks and the diffusion of green knowledge within the Swedish pulp and paper industry (P&P) from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. During this period, the Swedish P&P underwent a period of rapid environmental improvements. Our case demonstrates that the environmental adaptation of this line of business cannot be understood from merely a corporate focus—that is, as something accomplished by single firms or industries simply as a response to environmental regulation. By employing an innovation system approach, we find that the knowledge and technology development underpinning environmental adaptation within the Swedish P&P has involved a network of diverse actors. In this context, the semi-governmental Institute for Water and Air Protection (IVL) and its service company held important roles as intermediaries of knowledge within the network, not the least because of IVL's position "in between" government and industry. We suggest that one of the many important challenges for future research should be to compare how different national institutional settings have shaped the formation of "green" innovation systems. This would beneficially include national features of corporate stakeholder relations, as these influence firms' interplay with other firms as well as with other actors in the innovation system. ; Godkänd; 2011; 20110315 (krisod)