Take Trump's announcements on climate and energy and imagine, essentially, the opposite. You'll find yourself catapulted to Sweden, a country whose prime minister has decided to respond forcefully to the choices that the new President of the United States has indicated he wants to adopt.

The goal: making up for the United States' about-turn

Stockholm's head of government, Stefan Lofven, has stated in no uncertain terms that "the positions of the new American administration are alarming". Partly for this reason, Sweden has announced a new ecological transition plan, with the aim of fully complying with the terms of the Agreement signed in Paris at the close of Cop21 in December 2015.
In particular, the Scandinavian nation has decided to commit to completely zeroing its net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045. The same legislation provides, for example, for a 70 per cent cut in emissions from the public transport sector, to be achieved in this case by 2030. Climate Policy Minister Isabella Lovin has explained that this choice should be shared by all European nations, in order to commit even more strongly to the fight against climate change, "now that the United States is stepping back".

"Sweden wants to set an example"

The new law — which will come into force on 1 January 2018 — is also binding on future Swedish governments: it was passed with broad cross-party support, reached by seven of the eight political parties currently sitting in parliament. According to Lovin, Sweden wishes in this way to set an example, in a period characterised by "the great rise of climate sceptics worldwide". In this regard, Lovin herself praised the commitments made by China and India, describing them as "encouraging: Beijing has invested billions and billions of dollars in solar energy". By contrast, she added, "those who continue to want to fund fossil fuels will be the big losers".

Costa Rica and Nicaragua in their wake. And France, if it so wishes…

On the same wavelength as Sweden, meanwhile, there are now various nations. This is the case, for example, of Costa Rica, which meets an enormous percentage of its energy needs using hydroelectric, geothermal, solar and wind power. But also Nicaragua, which already today achieves 55 per cent of its energy production from renewable sources and aims to reach 90 per cent by 2020.
But even large industrialised nations could come to consume only energy produced from clean sources. This has been demonstrated on numerous occasions by the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (Ademe), whose studies show that the European nation could be powered, by 2050, exclusively by renewable energy sources. A conclusion recently confirmed by another report from the négaWatt association. It is therefore not a question of technical feasibility, but of political will.