Abstract

The Swedish government has set up the overall goal that no netemissions of greenhouse gases can occur after 2050. A sub-target has beendeveloped for road transports which states that the use of fossil fuels mustbe reduced with 80% to 2030 in order to be completely abolished to 2050. Apublic inquiry mapping how this can be achieved was handed in to thegovernment late in 2013. The use of alternative fuels for road transport,both biofuels and electricity, is expected to give the biggest contributionto the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. The inquiry sets up a number ofgoals for how much the use of alternative fuels must increase to 2030 inorder to reach the overall goal and which instruments that are needed inorder to do so. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate how these goals can be reached and whatthe most likely obstacles that may obstruct the reaching of these goals maybe. The thesis also examines the instruments that the inquiry proposes to beimplemented in order to improve the incentives for the use of alternativefuels in the Swedish road transportation system. The results show that the possibilities for reaching the different goals varygreatly. The goal set up for how much the use of electricity as a fuel mustincrease may be reached for passenger cars but is considerably harder toreach for heavier vehicles since the electrification of buses and heavy dutytrucks are not commercialized yet. Despite this the goal for theelectrification of buses and heavy duty trucks are set four times as high asfor passenger cars. The use of biofuels has better technical conditions for reaching thenecessary level that the inquiry presents. This demands however theimplementations of generous instruments since biofuels often aresignificantly more expensive than fossil fuels to produce. The inquirypresents a set of instruments that are well suited for increasing the use andproduction of biofuels but the conditions for implementing these instrumentsare limited. The main obstacles for the implementation of these instrumentsare the Europeans Unions guidelines on how state aid to companies must bemanaged and how generous such an aid can be. The proposals that the inquirygives does not only go against how a state aid-program according to theEuropean Union should be organized but also how large such an aid can be.This fact makes it unlikely that the proposed instruments can be implementedin the form the inquiry suggests and further inquiry will be necessary beforesimilar instruments can be established. This time-delay during which the useof biofuels will not increase significantly may make it difficult to reachthe goal for the use of biofuels.