Smurfit Kappa wins on emission allowances

Piteå Paper packaging company Smurfit Kappa Kraftliner Piteå is one of the big winners in the country as carbon emission prices rise. It uses only a fraction of its free allowances, earning €15 million. All forestry industries in Norrbotten benefit from their emission rights. The mining and steel industries, on the other hand, lose out when they emit more carbon dioxide than they have emission rights for.

The news agency Newsworthy, together with The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's (Naturvårdsverket) magazine Sveriges Natur, has mapped the Swedish winners and losers in the trade in emission rights.

The price of emission allowances reached a new record in 2022, with an average price of €79 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent. Five years ago, a tonne cost just under €6. So far this year, the price has increased further. This means higher costs for companies that need to buy allowances to cover their emissions, and higher revenues for those who have surplus allowances. In 2017, installations in Norrbotten had surplus allowances worth about €2.7 million. In 2022, the corresponding figure was €44.2 million.

Smurfit Kappa in Piteå was allocated allowances for just over 199,000 tons of greenhouse gases in 2022, but only emitted just over 10,000 tons, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's preliminary figures. This makes Smurfit Kappa Piteå the plant that has received the second most unused allowances in the whole country - just over 189,000 tons. With an average price of €79, this represents a value of around €15 million.

In Norrbotten and Sweden, the paper and pulp industry has the largest surplus of free emission allowances of all industries. This is the list of the companies in Norrbotten that are the biggest winners in the emission rights trade:

The mining and steel industry, on the other hand, emits more carbon dioxide than they have emission rights for. The industry has the largest deficit in terms of emission rights. Many district heating plants are also in the red: