Industrious Activist

Like many people concerned about pollution and climate change, Lars G. Josefsson believes that the world’s electricity companies urgently need to clean up their act. Utilities are the single biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions on the planet and Josefsson, an engineer by training, says that even though we may not know exactly how severely we are changing the climate, “it is severe enough to act now.”

Such talk may be commonplace among environmental activists, but it’s all but unheard of in Josefsson’s line of business: he’s the chief executive of Sweden’s state-owned Vattenfall, one of the biggest electricity companies in Europe, a $15 billion firm that operates hydroelectric, nuclear and — by far the most environmentally harmful — coal-fired plants. Through a mixture of high-profile public diplomacy and corporate example, he’s on a mission to persuade his peers around the world that they should take radical action on climate change. “It’s a question of enlightened self-interest,” Josefsson says, matter-of-factly.

The key to the future, he reckons, is to introduce a worldwide system to limit carbon dioxide emissions and create a market in which quotas can be traded. Such a scheme has been in operation in Europe since the beginning of the year under the terms of the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol on climate change. But Josefsson argues that Kyoto doesn’t go nearly far enough. The 54-year-old grandfather advocates setting worldwide emissions limits for the next 100 years. He has been lobbying politicians and others, and is currently cooking up details to present to international industry leaders this fall at a meeting in Japan. Shortly before the G-8 summit at Gleneagles in July, he was one of two dozen business leaders who signed a statement urging action on climate change and discussed the issue for two hours with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He met with U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman in March, and has also given several forceful speeches at international meetings. “I am prepared to take action. I hope the same goes for many of my colleagues,” he said at a meeting in Boston.

Utilities are grudgingly hearing his message, largely from a fear that if they don’t take action on their own, they’ll eventually have policies they like even less imposed on them. “Most people believe cap and trade is better than command and control,” says James Rogers, chief executive of Cincinnati-based Cinergy Corp., who describes Josefsson “as a very thoughtful leader.”

Some environmental groups are more skeptical, not least because Vattenfall itself acquired some dirty coal-burning plants in eastern Germany and Poland in recent years. Josefsson points to a pilot project the firm is funding that seeks to liquefy carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and pump them deep underground. But even Lars A. Kristoferson, a Vattenfall critic who heads the World Wildlife Fund in Sweden, concedes that on environmental issues “by international comparison, Vattenfall is doing better than others.” Josefsson remains confident that a workable solution to climate change is possible. And whatever it turns out to be, he insists, “the short-term pain has to be endurable for everyone.”