Anna Breman: How the Sveriges Riksbank can contribute to climate policy

Speech by Ms Anna Breman, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Stockholm, 3 March 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Accompanying slides of the speech.

I would like to start by extending a warm thank-you to Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm Environment Institute, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, och Misum for arranging this seminar.

Perhaps you recognise the expression Hinc robur et securitas. It is Latin for From here, strength and security. It is the Riksbank's motto. It is on the Riksbank's emblem and it has also be seen on some of our banknotes. I learnt this when I arrived at the Riksbank as a new Deputy Governor a few months ago and it stuck - from here, strength and security.

As a new Deputy Governor, I feel a responsibility for preserving the Riksbank's role as a guarantor of strength and security when the world around us is fraught with unease - unease over trade wars, unease over the coronavirus, and unease over climate change, to give a few examples. For a new Deputy Governor, it also becomes evident that those of us in the Executive Board make decisions that affect economic development for households and companies for several years to come. But the statistics we require to fully understand developments can sometimes be incomplete and forecasts are always very uncertain. Uncertainty also characterises the subject I am going to focus on today - the effects of climate change on the Swedish and the global economy.