Green Industrial Imaginaries in the North: A Critical Study of Regional Policy on Transition

After decades of population decline, Northern Sweden is the scene for over 700-million-dollar investments in green industrial transition. The funding is primarily directed to production of “fossil free” steel and lithium batteries, at considerable scale and in a near future. These investments are destined to green industries in Sweden as well as globally, but also expected to lead to thousands of new jobs. As a consequence, there is a pressing need for more people to move into the area. The current estimation from Region Norrbotten and Region Västerbotten is that 100 000 people need to move to Northern Sweden in order to make this transition possible, this is to an area that is currently populated by around 520 000 people. This paper looks into regional policy on “green” industrial transition in Norrbotten as a case due to its current international status of being a forerunner in industrial transition. Region Norrbotten points out three different paths, or pillars, that they work with in order to enhance and handle the green industrial transition that is taking place: “Loket”, “Lux” and “The North Sweden Green Deal” (Region Norrbotten, 2022). The analysis is based on these policy documents as well as observations of digital conferences. The paper utilises a critical policy analysis approach whereby “problem representations” (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016) produced in the current processes of making industrial development sustainable are identified. By using the What’s the problem represented to be? approach (WPR), I identify major problem representations in both regional and national policy texts on “green industrial transition” in the North of Sweden. The aim of the study is to identify and analyse how “green” industrial transition is represented, as well as potential effects of these representations. Additionally, I aim to identify sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015) in the underlying assumptions of the problem representations. By including the concept sociotechnical imaginaries in the analytical framework, my ambition is to illuminate aspects of the problem representations that could otherwise be missed or neglected. These aspects are theoretical, concerning the function of collectively imagined futures in policy making, as well as empirical due to the focus on specific technical and material dimensions that the concept brings. Together, I argue, this helps me to grasp and analyze representations of sustainable industrial development in a policy area heavily directed to innovative, technical and “smart” solutions to environmental problems. A short discussion on alternative representations of sustainable industrial transition will conclude the paper.