Vattenfall's latest climate campaign faces protests from environmental organisations

If you live in northern Europe you might have heard about a new "climate manifesto" from Vattenfall, Europe's third-largest energy company which is wholly owned by the Swedish government.

With this "climate manifesto" Vattenfall is a trying to influence politicians and governments to put a global price on CO2 emissions, support (read financial support) climate friendly technologies and implement climate requirements for products. It all sounds good but this is just another greenwashing campaign from a dirty energy company.

Vattenfall (Swedish for waterfall) is a company that owns 20 coal powered plants around Europe (none in Sweden), three of them are the dirtiest in Europe.

And even when we face a man-made climate crisis beyond our wildest dreams Vattenfall is still investing more money into fossil fuels such as coal, which is alone responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. They are currently building a new coal plant outside of Hamburg in Germany that once completed will become the biggest in Europe.

And during the last two years Vattenfall have invested nearly 400% more money in fossil fuels, such as nuclear energy and coal, than in renewable energy sources. As a result Vattenfall last year released more greenhouse gases than all of Sweden combined (85 million tons compared to Swedens 55 million tons).

And now their "climate manifesto" is facing protests from environmental organisations. Greenpeace in Sweden is for example encouraging people to send in a new and more honest version of Vattenfall and its logo.

And the Swedish climate group Klimax (Climax), known in Sweden for their campaigns against private motorism, the aviation and meat industry last week blocked the entrance to Vattenfall's head office. The protestors demanded that Vattenfall should stop its latest greenwashing campaign and end their investments in dirty coal.

If Vattenfall cares so much about the current climate crisis why don't they just reduce their investments in dirty fossil fuels, close their coal plants and invest more in clean renewable energy? And why try a cheap greenwashing gimmick to influence politicians? After all, they are already owned by the Swedish government.