8.1 Introduction

How can the state gain public acceptance and support for the transformative social change required for deep decarbonization? This is a question that has moved to the center of academic and policy debate in recent years. In a time when populist movements are invoking democracy to uphold carbon-intensive systems and ways of life (Reference Marquardt and LedererMarquardt and Lederer, 2022), scholars and policymakers alike are searching for a democratic vocabulary that attends to the disagreements and conflicts engendered by transformative climate action (Reference BlühdornBlühdorn, 2020; Reference MachinMachin 2020). Just transition is a concept mobilized to that end. Since the term was incorporated into the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, it has guided thinking on the social distribution of benefit and harm resulting from decarbonization policies. Much of this debate has focused on the loss of jobs and livelihoods in regions dependent on extractive and carbon-intensive industries (Reference Bazilian, Carley and KoniskyBazilian et al., 2021; Reference KaltKalt, 2021). To make the transition to net-zero emissions inclusive and just, policymakers across the Global North have recognized the need to pay special attention to the regions, cities, and workers that are negatively affected by the shift away from fossil fuels (Reference Fleming and MaugerFleming and Mauger, 2021; Silesia Declaration, 2018).

In recent years, the just transition vocabulary has also gained traction in the Swedish climate policy debate. Although government actors such as Fossil Free Sweden (FFS) have staged the 2045 net-zero emissions goal as an opportunity that will lead to green jobs, industrial competitiveness, and sustainable welfare (Reference Brodén Gyberg and LövbrandBrodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022), political parties from the left and right have begun to address how the social costs of decarbonization are geographically distributed. In the debates preceding Sweden’s parliamentary elections in September 2022, there was widespread recognition that the costs and capacities for emission reductions vary across the country (Reference Fischer, Sofie and StrandellFischer et al., 2023). Whereas Sweden’s urban centers have positioned themselves as climate frontrunners, many rural areas and smaller cities are struggling to decarbonize. As illustrated by Widerberg and Fast in Chapter 5 of this book, the carbon footprint is particularly large in cities that host energy-intensive process industries of historical and strategic importance for the Swedish welfare state (e.g., steel, cement, petroleum, paper). Although Sweden’s industrial carbon emissions have decreased by 31 percent since 1990, heavy industry still accounts for roughly one-third of the country’s territorial emissions, and in some industry sectors emissions are still increasing (SEPA, 2022).

In this chapter, we use narrative analysis to trace how Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize are imagined and storied by people who live in the shadow of extractive and carbon-intensive industries. Our analysis draws on an interview study with local politicians, municipal officials, union representatives, and citizen groups in the city of Lysekil. This small town of 14,500 inhabitants is located on the Swedish west coast, where the Gullmardsfjord meets the open waters of the North Sea. Known for its unique marine life and red granite rocks, Lysekil has long been an attractive tourist destination and hub for maritime trade and shipping. Since 1975, Lysekil has also been home to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery, Preemraff, and is therefore one of Sweden’s largest municipal emitters of carbon dioxide (for details, see Chapter 5 of this book). The refinery was one of Sweden’s largest industrial projects of the 1970s and was built to offer national energy security and employment to a region in industrial decline (Reference FredhFredh, 2015). Following five decades of fossil-fuel production, Lysekil is today struggling with a carbon lock-in that is both materially and culturally entrenched (Reference Seto, Davis and MitchellSeto et al., 2016; Reference WodrigWodrig, 2018). Preemraff is not only an important local employer and source of tax revenue. Over the years, the refinery has also become deeply embedded in everyday city life and entangled with community identity and sense of place.

In the following, we present findings from fieldwork conducted in March and October 2020. This was a year of political turmoil in Lysekil when Preemraff’s plans to expand its conversion of residue oil became a matter of national political concern. The preliminary environmental permit offered to the refinery in November 2018 had stirred a heated debate in the Swedish climate movement and resulted in an appeal by numerous environmental organizations. Since Preemraff’s expansion plans entailed a doubling of the refinery’s carbon dioxide emissions, many actors warned that the permit meant that Sweden might not reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2045 (SSNC, 2021). When the Environmental Court of Appeal decided to reopen the case in June 2019, Lysekil became a site of climate controversy and struggle. In the debate following the Preemraff court case, local jobs were pitted against global climate concerns, the socio-economic welfare of fossil-fuel workers against the rights of future generations, municipal tax revenues against national climate goals, and the fossil-fueled economy against visions of a fossil-free society.

During our first visit to the city, we observed the negotiations of the Environmental Court of Appeal and interacted with environmental activists and local citizens who followed the case from the streets of Lysekil. When we returned to the city six months later to further our interview study, the Swedish government had taken over the court case and Preemraff had unexpectedly decided to cancel its expansion plans. Our interview responses reflect the turmoil, sense of confusion, and uncertainty about the future expressed by local actors as a result of Preemraff’s decision. This chapter is organized in four parts. First, we place our study in the academic scholarship on just transitions and specify how a narrative analysis can help to further the same. Second, we describe our empirical material and outline how the justice claims in our interview responses were thematized and categorized. Third, we introduce the controversy following Preemraff’s expansion plans and how it placed Lysekil in the national limelight. Finally, we present three stories of climate (in)justice derived from our material and discuss why they matter in the governance of deep decarbonization.

8.2 Just Transition: A Concept with Multiple Meanings

Just transition is a concept that is placed at the intersection of movement struggle and academic debate. While originating in the North American trade union movements of the 1970s and their struggle for occupational health and safety (Reference Stevis, Morena, Krause, Morena, Krause and StevisStevis et al., 2020), the concept has been picked up by environmental justice scholars to examine those who live with the side effects of fossil-fuel extraction, production, and generation, and who will bear the social costs of decarbonization policies (Reference Newell and MulvaneyNewell and Mulvaney, 2013; Reference SovalcoolSovacool, 2021). Informed by political economy questions such as “who wins, who loses, how and why” (Reference Newell and MulvaneyNewell and Mulvaney, 2013, p. 133), just transition scholarship is sensitive to the politics of low carbon transitions. Instead of assuming that the shift away from fossil fuels will benefit all actors and regions equally, work in this field highlights the conflicts, disruptions, and exclusions that underwrite transformative climate action (Reference Goldthau and SovacoolGoldthau and Sovacool, 2012; Reference WodrigWodrig, 2018).

While the concept of just transition signals a desire to embed climate policy debate in questions of social equity and justice, the widespread engagement with the term has led to divergent interpretations. In the literature, a distinction is often made between the redistributive justice claims emanating from the labor movement, on the one hand, and the more expansive justice agenda advanced by environmental justice scholars and activists on the other (Reference Wang and LoWang and Lo, 2021). In the labor-oriented debate, just transition is defined in economic terms and tied to the rights of fossil-fuel workers and their surrounding communities (Reference Cha and PastorCha and Pastor, 2022). Here, the subjects of injustice are defined by their economic dependence on the jobs and tax revenues provided by hazardous industries. Following a redistributive conception of justice (Reference FraserFraser, 2001), the remedy for injustice is sought through economic and social protection programs that offer job retraining, unemployment benefits, and pensions to displaced fossil-fuel workers. Just transition demands emanating from the labor movement also regularly include calls for public investments to help fossil-fuel-producing communities relocate to a renewable economy (Reference Wang and LoWang and Lo, 2021).

The second just transition agenda is broader in scope and seeks to build alliances across labor unions, environmentalists, and civil rights groups (Reference Wang and LoWang and Lo, 2021). Rooted in an environmental justice tradition, it draws attention to the vulnerable groups in society that are least responsible for the climate crisis and yet disproportionally made to pay for climate mitigation and adaptation efforts (Reference Stevis, Morena, Krause, Morena, Krause and StevisStevis et al., 2020). This strand of scholarship offers a more expansive understanding of what just transition stands for, who it is for, and what its underlying politics are. By recognizing the many environmental injustices tied to class, gender, and ethnic background, work in this field seeks to counter the social cultures of misrecognition and institutional exclusion that underlie poor distribution in the first place (Reference SchlosbergSchlosberg, 2004). Thus, just transition efforts extend beyond compensation schemes to fossil-fuel workers and their families. The political project is more transformative in nature and involves recognizing and respecting the day-to-day struggles and concerns of “frontline communities” (Reference Stevis, Morena, Krause, Morena, Krause and StevisStevis et al., 2020) that bear the burdens of an extractive and fossil-fueled economy (Reference Cha and PastorCha and Pastor, 2022; Reference FraserFraser, 2001).

In the latter account of just transition, claims for social equality and cultural recognition go hand in hand with procedural accounts of justice. In order to open up opportunities for just and sustainable futures, environmental justice scholars and activists alike have called for democratic institutions that involve marginalized groups as equal partners in climate policy discourse and practice (Reference Cha and PastorCha and Pastor, 2022). Inclusive and participatory decision-making procedures are seen here as both an element of, and a condition for, distributive and recognition justice (Reference SchlosbergSchlosberg, 2004). In recent years, this broader just transition agenda has been picked up by environmental NGOs and climate justice networks to unite movement struggle in global climate politics (Reference Rosemberg, Morena, Krause and StevisRosemberg, 2020). Hence, the actors who mobilize for just transitions today extend beyond labor unions and include environmentalists, indigenous communities, human rights activists, and youth networks. While the concept of just transition has been successful in bringing together these diverse social movements behind a unified banner, it remains a living concept with multiple and sometimes conflicting articulations and meanings (Reference Stevis, Morena, Krause, Morena, Krause and StevisStevis et al., 2020).

This chapter adopts a narrative lens to trace the multiple stories of climate (in)justice told by non-state and sub-state actors in the city of Lysekil as a result of the Preemraff court case and Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize. We contend that narratives – or the stories people tell – are helpful when seeking to understand the subjective nature of political reality and what motivates people to take (or resist) climate action (Reference Lejano, Ingram and IngramLejano et al., 2013). As argued by Reference Patterson and MonroePatterson and Monroe (1998, p. 330), narratives can provide a rich source of information about how people make sense of their lives, put together information, think of themselves, and interpret their world. When studying narratives, analysts not only gain information about a sequence of events. Narrative analysis also offers insight into how individuals and collectives imbue those events with meaning and establish shared aims and identities (Reference Robertson, Boréus and BergströmRobertson, 2017, p. 124). While stories are contextually thick and start from the speaker’s lived experience, they can also function as the glue that binds heterogenous groups of actors together and motivates collective action (Reference Lejano, Ingram and IngramLejano et al., 2013). As illustrated by Reference KaltKalt’s (2021) study of the German energy transition, for instance, social movements strategically tell stories of climate injustice to mobilize adherents, demoralize opponents, and provide direction for political action.

Narrative scholars often use the terms “narrative” and “story” interchangeably. Loosely defined, both terms refer to the chronological and thematic ordering of events into plots that tie different parts together into a meaningful whole (Reference Robertson, Boréus and BergströmRobertson, 2017, p. 124). In this chapter, however, we make an analytical distinction between the canonical justice narratives advanced by the labor and environmental justice movements, on the one hand, and the emplaced stories of climate (in)justice told in Lysekil, on the other. Following Reference Feldman, Sköldberg, Brown and HornerFeldman et al. (2004), we suggest that narratives are characterized by their general currency and durability, whereas stories embed narrative themes in the lived experience of people in a specific time and place. Although few of our interview respondents are directly linked to the labor and environmental justice movements’ just transition efforts, we make use of the two just transition narratives outlined above as helpful interpretative frames that allow us to explore how the stories of climate (in)justice told in Lysekil are narratively linked to broader movement struggle.

8.3 Narrating Just Transitions: Method and Material

As a research method, narrative analysis is attentive to how people “story” themselves into social and political relations through an intermingling of rationality, affect, norms, and culture (Reference Lejano, Ingram and IngramLejano et al., 2013, 13). Researchers look for stories in novels, films, autobiographies, policy documents, oral accounts, and interview transcripts. Some stories have a single narrator; others have multiple voices (Reference Robertson, Boréus and BergströmRobertson, 2017). The role of the analyst is to interpret what the storyteller means by looking at narrative form, structure, and content (Reference Feldman, Sköldberg, Brown and HornerFeldman et al., 2004). By attending to “the what” and “the how” of the narrative, it is possible to discern patterns across a larger corpus of material. This chapter follows Reference Jones and McBethJones’ and McBeth’s (2010) framework for narrative policy analysis to identify and categorize the stories of climate (in)justice told in Lysekil. We do so by attending to four narrative elements: (1) the context of the story, such as the institutional setting of the Preemraff controversy, (2) the plot that binds the Preemraff court case together, (3) the characters of the story, such as the victims of climate injustice and the agents responsible for doing something about it, and (4) the moral, or principles of right and wrong, that guides policy solutions.

Our analysis rests upon four sources of primary material: (1) media coverage and press releases relating to the Preemraff court case; (2) participant observations during the Environmental Court of Appeal’s negotiations in Lysekil from March 10–12, 2020; (3) 18 individual interviews with local politicians, municipal officials, union representatives, and industry management; and (4) four focus group interviews with local citizen groups (a total of 13 people). For a detailed list of interviews, see Table 8.1. The media articles and press releases were retrieved through open searches in Google, using Swedish search terms such as “Preemraff,” “Preemraffs utbyggnad,” “Stoppa Preemraff.” Our media material is limited in scope and was primarily used to contextualize and triangulate the stories told by our interviewees. The participant observations were recorded through field notes and offered additional context to our interviews. The interviews form the main corpus of our narrative analysis. Most interviews were conducted in Lysekil in October 2020, but due to pandemic-related travel restrictions, some were also held online.

The focus group participants were recruited through open invitations posted at the local library and with the help of local gatekeepers (e.g., a municipal official, a community organizer, and a local schoolteacher). When composing the focus groups, we strived to achieve a plurality of local voices and perspectives. Due to the controversial nature of the Preemraff court case, some focus groups turned out to be smaller than we had initially planned. To avoid any discomfort among the interviewees, we decided not to mix the groups and ensured that all would be de-identified. The interviewees received detailed information about the project prior to the interviews and gave their written consent.

All interviews were semi-structured and lasted from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours (Reference Kvale and BrinkmannKvale and Brinkmann, 2009; Reference WibeckWibeck, 2010). To encourage narrativization, we invited our interviewees to reflect upon five open-ended questions: (1) their views on Lysekil’s past and present; (2) how Sweden’s ambition to become the first fossil-free welfare state will impact the city; (3) how they view Preemraff’s expansion plans; (4) who has agency and responsibility in the fossil-free transition; and (5) what a just transition to net-zero emissions entails. The interviews were recorded and transcribed for further analysis. The transcripts were inserted into NVivo software and categorized by actor and type (Reference MaherMaher, 2018). Our qualitative analysis followed an iterative and abductive approach (cf. Reference Berner, Bergman and OlofssonBerner, 2005; Reference Srivastava and HopwoodSrivastava and Hopwood, 2009) in which we explored and categorized local justice claims in view of the more canonical narratives found in the just transition scholarship. After several rounds of explorative coding (Reference FaircloughFairclough, 1993; Reference Ryan and BernardRyan and Bernard, 2003), we assembled re-occurring themes and claims into three stories of climate (in)justice that were systematized using the narrative framework proposed by Reference Jones and McBethJones and McBeth (2010).

None of the stories presented in this chapter are told by a single narrator. They are all multi-voiced and the result of our active interpretation of the multiple and sometimes incongruous meanings invoked by the interviewees. While we looked for recurring narrative themes in our material, we were also attentive to stories that break canonicity and offer contending interpretations of what the Preemraff controversy means for Lysekil, its citizens, and ultimately Sweden’s ability to justly transition to net-zero emissions. Hence, rather than striving to achieve a unified picture, the three stories presented here reflect our analytical ambition to extend the political imagination by making space for unexpected voices and claims.

8.4 The Preemraff Controversy: Setting the Scene

Swedish industrial emissions of carbon dioxide are linked to a few major plants in the iron and steel, mineral, and petroleum sectors (SEPA, 2022). One of these plants is the Preemraff oil refinery, located in Brofjorden, a couple of kilometers north of Lysekil. The refinery was built during the 1973 oil crisis when oil prices skyrocketed on the global market. At the time, the Swedish economy was highly dependent upon imported petroleum products, and the Social Democratic government worried that rising prices would bring harm to Swedish industry and households (Reference Vedung and HansénVedung and Hansén, 2019). When the government launched widespread oil rationing and energy-efficiency schemes in 1974, it set in motion a national energy transition with significant climate implications. Within one decade, the share of oil in Sweden’s energy supply dropped from 70 to 40 percent, and the territorial carbon emissions were almost halved in a single stroke (SCPC, 2019, p. 17).

When the oil crisis unfolded in Sweden, the construction of the refinery in Lysekil was already under way. The Swedish Oil Cooperative (OK) had for some time lobbied the national government for permission to build a consumer-owned plant that would reduce the market dominance of international oil companies and secure a steady supply of fossil fuels to Swedish farmers, fishermen, and vehicle owners (Oljeraffinaderiet Scanraff, 2022). In the late 1960s, OK identified Brofjorden as a possible location for its refinery. Given its deep-sea waters and stable granite rocks, Brofjorden was seen as an ideal site for oil processing, shipping, and storage (Reference FredhFredh, 2015). While support for the investment was almost unanimous among local politicians in Lysekil, environmental groups and nearby house owners expressed concern about the loss of recreational value and property prices in the region. When the protest group “Save Brofjorden” was formed to stop the establishment of the refinery, it exposed tensions between the city’s seasonal visitors and industrial workers. Whereas the former group sought to save Lysekil’s pristine marine environment from the oil industry, the latter group highlighted the jobs and social welfare benefits promised by OK (Reference FredhFredh, 2015). The environmental protests resulted in numerous investigations by the national authorities but were also loudly challenged by local politicians who insisted that industrial development and nature protection could go hand in hand. In November 1970, the Social Democratic government granted OK permission to build the refinery, and one year later the construction of the deep-sea port began.

The construction of the refinery in Lysekil was a huge undertaking involving planners, lawyers, architects, engineers, and construction workers from all parts of Sweden, as well as internationally. In parallel to the construction of the port and the onshore processing units, the refinery required multiple underground oil storage areas and two 140-meter-high chimneys. According to architect Joan Sachs, concerted efforts were made to let the refinery merge into the landscape, thereby creating “an ecological balance between industry and nature” (Reference FredhFredh, 2015, p. 23, our translation). New roads were built to facilitate the transport of materials, and two new schools were established in Lysekil to serve the families of incoming Italian and North American workers. As argued by local city planner Nils Halla at the time, “We have customized Lysekil’s urban plan to accommodate OK” (Reference FredhFredh, 2015, p. 9, our translation). After four years of intensive construction work, the Scandinavian refinery AB (Scanraff) was officially inaugurated by Swedish King Carl XVI Gustav in May 1975. The event was widely attended by representatives from local and national government and celebrated as an important investment that would offer both national energy security and local job security (Reference FredhFredh, 2015).

In the mid-1990s, OK Petroleum was bought by Saudi Sheik Mohammed H. Al Amoudi and the refinery in Lysekil changed its name to Preemraff. The plant was hereby incorporated into the larger petroleum company Preem, with headquarters in Stockholm and additional refineries in Gothenburg. Today, Preemraff employs some 600 workers from Lysekil and the surrounding area (Preemraff, 2021). Although the refinery offers less jobs than Lysekil’s thriving tourism industry (Regionfakta, 2022), Preemraff remains an important source of livelihood for the city’s industrial workers and their families. When Preem applied for a permit in December 2016 to expand its operations in Lysekil through a project called Residue Oil Conversion Complex (ROCC), local reaction was therefore largely positive. The ROCC project was presented as a response to the International Maritime Organization’s decision to ban high-sulfur marine fuel and entailed the building of a cracker that would allow the refinery to convert sulfur-rich residue oil into low sulfur diesel and gasoline (Reference LangletLanglet, 2019). The project involved a SEK 15 billion investment that was estimated to provide employment for 2,000 construction workers over a two-year period and result in 200 new long-term jobs at the refinery (Lysekilsposten, 2017).

In the local city council, politicians from the left to the right openly celebrated the new jobs promised by the industry (DN, 2020). However, the expansion plans also gave new impetus to the “Save Brofjorden” campaign and its long-standing critique of the refinery (Rädda Brofjorden, 2023). Local house owners raised concerns about the health effects of the sulfurous winds blowing from the plant, and various environmental organizations questioned whether the ROCC project was compatible with the Swedish climate policy framework and the 2045 net-zero emission goal (Stoppa Preemraff, 2023). In 2018, Preemraff was the third largest Swedish point source of carbon dioxide with annual emissions of 1.7 million tons (SEPA, 2022). With the ROCC project in place, the emissions were estimated to increase to 3.4 million tons per year, turning Preemraff into the largest industrial emitter in Sweden (Reference LangletLanglet, 2019). In June 2019, the Environmental Court of Appeal decided to recall the preliminary environmental permit granted to the refinery (Land and Environmental Court, 2018), and in March 2020 the involved parties were invited to court hearings in Lysekil.

“We say keep it in the ground!” was the slogan chanted by the many environmental activists who had traveled to Lysekil for the court hearings. While Extinction Rebellion, Climate Action, and Fridays for Future marched in the streets to express their outrage against Preemraff’s expansion plans, Greenpeace activists protested from the sea in kayaks and smaller vessels. Inside Oscars, a 19th-century clubhouse temporarily converted into a court room, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) called in climate experts who pointed at Sweden’s fair share of a shrinking global carbon budget. If we are to have any chance of limiting global mean warming to 1.5°C, argued the experts, rich countries like Sweden must show leadership and cut domestic carbon dioxide emissions to zero as early as 2030. Hence, rather than expanding the processing of oil, SSNC called for a fossil-fuel phase-out within the coming decade. Representatives from Preem, in contrast, pointed at the climate benefits of the ROCC project. By providing a global shipping industry with low-sulfur fuel, the refinery promised long-term energy-efficiency gains and reduced global emissions (participant observation, March 2020).

In June 2020, the Environmental Court of Appeal handed over its final ruling to the Swedish government (Land and Environmental Court, 2020). The court concluded that the Swedish climate policy framework has no legal standing in the environmental permit process. The carbon dioxide emissions generated by Preemraff are regulated by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), and the ROCC project was thereby beyond the jurisdiction of Sweden’s national climate goals. With the legal permit in place, the final decision was now in the hands of the Social-Democratic and Green coalition government. Given the political energy and prestige invested in the Climate Policy Framework by the Swedish Green Party, the government searched for a compromise that would safeguard the jobs in Lysekil and yet keep the national climate goal within reach. Despite rumors of intense negotiations between the Ministry of Environment and Preem management (Expressen, 2020), many were surprised when the company announced in late September 2020 that the ROCC project was cancelled and that Preemraff would redirect its operations toward renewable fuel production. Although the decision was justified on strictly commercial grounds (Preem, 2020), the climate movement interpreted the result as a victory and a crucial step in Sweden’s fossil-free transition (SSNC, 2021).

8.5 Contending Stories of Climate (In)justice

In the following, we present three stories of climate (in)justice told by non-state and sub-state actors in Lysekil in view of the Preemraff court case and Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize.

8.6 Conclusion

The deep decarbonization required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement is a massive undertaking that requires widespread engagement of actors across jurisdictional levels and societal sectors (Chapter 1, this book). In order to rapidly move society toward net-zero emissions, the Swedish government has invited industry, businesses, regions, and municipalities to identify transformative pathways that can break carbon lock-ins and accelerate the shift away from fossil-fueled infrastructures and practices (Chapter 7, this book). However, since such pathways entail profound changes in social, technical, economic, and political systems, they are also disruptive and subject to democratic contestation (Reference Bernstein and HoffmanBernstein and Hoffman, 2018; Reference BlühdornBlühdorn, 2020).

This chapter has approached the city of Lysekil as an empirical site where transformative disruptions and contestation come to the fore. We employed a narrative analysis to trace stories of climate (in)justice told by local actors in view of Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize and to examine how people living in the shadow of Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery imagine a just transition to net-zero emissions. We found that many actors in Lysekil are struggling to overcome the fundamental conflict between ambitious climate action and fossil-fueled forms of local development. Despite municipal efforts to bring emissions down in the housing, transport, and energy sectors, the city operates in the shadow of the refinery, and many citizens remain locked into carbon-intensive jobs and infrastructures. The extensive investments channeled into the planning, building, and upgrading of the petrochemical infrastructure in Brofjorden illustrate how decisions in the past shape the imagining of transformative opportunities in the present and future. In Lysekil, the path dependencies that prevent decarbonization have both material and cultural dimensions.

A recurring story of climate (in)justice told in view of the Preemraff controversy revolves around the “jobs vs. climate binary” (Reference Stevis, Morena, Krause, Morena, Krause and StevisStevis et al., 2020) and the unjust social distribution of social benefits and costs between Sweden’s fossil-fuel producers and consumers, urban centers and rural periphery, the rich and the poor. This story draws upon several narrative themes found in the labor movement’s just transition agenda and asserts that the remedy for climate injustice is to be found in economic compensation and diversification schemes. In the years following the Preemraff court case, this distributive story took hold in the Swedish climate policy debate (Reference Fischer, Sofie and StrandellFischer et al., 2023) and was picked up by the Social Democratic and Green coalition government to channel funds from the EU’s Just Transition Mechanism (Reference Moodie, Tapia, Löfving, Sánchez Gassen and CedergrenMoodie et al., 2021). Whether the city of Lysekil will receive any economic compensation for potential job loss remains to be seen. In November 2021, the government identified the petrochemical industry on the Swedish west coast as one of the actors in need of EU just transition support (Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, 2021). However, the same month, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) was notified that Preemraff had underreported its annual carbon dioxide emissions during the past five-year period (SEPA, 2022), and the Swedish climate movement initiated a new appeal process against the refinery’s biofuel production plans (Stoppa Preemraff, 2023). The controversy continues.

While debates about who gets what, when, and how are likely to intensify as Sweden’s 2045 emissions goal comes closer, just transitions need not be interpreted in distributive terms alone. In fact, recent studies have suggested that distributive claims can “hollow out” progressive justice agendas and be used to justify climate inaction (Reference Abram, Atkins and DietzelAbram et al., 2022; Reference Fischer, Sofie and StrandellFischer et al., 2023). This chapter identified two alternative stories of climate (in)justice that push the just transition debate in other, and possibly more productive, directions. The procedural story taps into narrative themes advanced by the environmental justice movement and insists that the state must give voice to all those social groups who live in the shadow of Sweden’s extractive industries. Listening out for multiple experiences of Sweden’s industrial past and carbon-intensive present is key here to the co-construction of a sustainable society. Without social recognition and widespread participation, there will be no transition. The ecological story extends this just transition debate beyond the citizens of Lysekil and invites solidarity with all living environments that sustain a fossil-fueled and extractive global economy. To justly transition to net-zero emissions, this story pays attention to ecological interconnectedness and inequality. Sweden is not isolated from the rest of the world, and the shift away from fossil fuels can therefore not come at the expense of vulnerable people and environments elsewhere.

The stories of climate (in)justice told in this chapter confirm that a just transition remains a living concept with multiple and sometime conflicting interpretations. Grounded in a mix of personal experiences, scientific facts, ethical considerations, emotions, and values, they illustrate how people give meaning to political events and “story” themselves into social and environmental relations. Attending to these stories is an important analytical task for scholars and policymakers concerned with breaking carbon lock-ins and accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels. Personal narratives give us access to different ways of experiencing and relating to a rapidly warming world and offer a close-up view of the interests, norms, and desires that make people support or reject transformative agendas. Although the multiple stories of climate (in)justice told in view of Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize may complicate the transition to a fossil-free society, we conclude that legitimate and progressive pathways to that society are unlikely to emerge without them.