How much of the Earth does Sweden use up?
Short answer: If everyone in the world lived like an average Swede, about four Earths would be needed, according to the Global Footprint Network, and in 2026 Sweden's overshoot day was 4 April. The measure is disputed, since almost the entire deficit comes from carbon dioxide. Each Swede uses just over 22 tonnes of material a year, more than the EU average of 14 tonnes but less than Finns and Norwegians. Consumption-based emissions were 7.5 tonnes per person in 2024, and six in ten tonnes were emitted in other countries. Felling has risen by a third since 1990, but the forest still grows more than is felled and absorbs as much carbon dioxide as Sweden emits. Sweden accounts for a quarter of the EU's mining waste but also has the EU's largest share of renewable energy and has cut sulphur emissions by 86 percent since 1990.
More on the environment: Climate and energy shows emissions and electricity municipality by municipality, Sweden in the world compares with other countries, Livestock keeping shows the climate footprint of meat and milk, Water and sewage groundwater and drinking water, The sea and fishing eutrophication in the Baltic Sea and the collapse of cod, Forests and the forest industry felling, the carbon sink and the red-listed species and Our economic model explains how the growth economy works. The large carnivores and the EU's protection of them are on Large carnivores. Mining waste, emissions and remediation are on Mines and critical minerals.
How many Earths would be needed if everyone lived like us.
Earths for 2026 from the Global Footprint Network's list of country overshoot days, based on the 2025 edition of the footprint accounts. Norway and Iceland are not included, as their data quality is considered too low. The world figure is 365 days divided by the 211 days up to the global overshoot day on 30 July 2026.
Consumption footprint 2023 in global hectares per person, that is hectares with the world's average biological productivity. From the Footprint Data Foundation's accounts, 2026 edition (CC BY-SA 4.0). Finland's consumption footprint is not published in that edition.
Biocapacity 2023 in global hectares per person: how much forest, cropland, grazing land and fishing water the country has, at the world's average productivity. From the Footprint Data Foundation's accounts, 2026 edition (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The ecological footprint converts everything a country consumes into the area of land and sea needed to produce it and to absorb its carbon dioxide. The footprint per Swede was 5.2 global hectares in 2023, and the Earth has 1.5 hectares per person. The ratio between them is the number of Earths. Sweden has plenty of forest and few inhabitants and therefore more biocapacity than Swedes use, 8.3 hectares per person; so do Finland and Norway. Denmark and Germany use more than their own nature provides.
Of the Swedish footprint, 45 percent was carbon dioxide, 29 percent forest products and 16 percent cropland. The method is criticised precisely for the carbon. Almost the entire global deficit comes from converting emissions into the forest that would be needed to absorb them, while cropland, grazing land and fisheries roughly break even in the calculation; without carbon the world uses about 0.7 Earths. Critics therefore argue that the measure says little about how land is actually depleted (Blomqvist et al. 2013, Giampietro and Saltelli 2014). The Global Footprint Network replies that carbon dioxide is exactly the part of human impact that nature cannot keep up with (Goldfinger et al. 2014).
The figures also change between editions. In the 2026 edition the oceans' uptake of carbon dioxide was revised upwards, and Sweden then comes to about 3.4 Earths instead of 3.9. The Global Footprint Network calls this a break in the series, not an improvement.
How many tonnes of material each inhabitant uses.
Material footprint (RMC) in tonnes per inhabitant and year from Eurostat (env_ac_rme, CC BY 4.0). It counts all raw materials needed for what the country consumes, including what is mined and grown abroad for imports, but not what is exported. The figures are model estimates. The latest year is 2025, for Norway 2023. The world average was 13.8 tonnes per person in 2022 according to the UN Environment Programme, using a different model.
More than half of all material the world uses is sand, gravel and stone for construction, a quarter is biomass such as food and wood, and the rest fossil fuels and ores. Finland and Norway rank high partly because they extract a lot of ore and stone, and in Finland also peat, relative to their population. Sweden is at the same level as Denmark, about one and a half times the EU average.
Swedes' material footprint has been between 22 and 27 tonnes per person since 2008, with no clear trend until it fell in 2023. A target for sustainable use often mentioned in research is 6 to 8 tonnes per person.
Emissions in Sweden and emissions from what we buy.
Tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per inhabitant, all greenhouse gases, calculated from Statistics Sweden's environmental accounts and emissions statistics (CC0) and the population on 31 December. Consumption-based emissions are those arising in Sweden and other countries for what households, the public sector and investment in Sweden use, excluding exports. Territorial emissions are those released within the country's borders, excluding land use and international aviation and shipping.
Consumption-based fossil carbon dioxide in tonnes per person 2023, excluding international aviation and shipping, from the Global Carbon Budget 2025 via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). Carbon dioxide only, not methane and nitrous oxide, and therefore lower than Statistics Sweden's figures and not comparable with them.
Consumption-based emissions were 79 million tonnes in 2024, and 48 million of them were released in other countries, mainly where the goods Sweden imports were made. Per person they have fallen from 11.5 tonnes in 2008 to 7.5 tonnes in 2024. Territorial emissions were 47 million tonnes in 2024, a third lower than in 1990. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's preliminary figure for 2025 is 46.7 million tonnes.
Counting carbon dioxide per inhabitant, Sweden has lower consumption-based emissions than the other Nordic countries and Germany, but higher than the world average. The difference from its neighbours comes largely from Swedish electricity and district heating emitting almost no fossil carbon dioxide.
Seven limits to what the Earth can take, shared equally per person.
The ratio between the country's use per inhabitant and an equal per person share of what the Earth can take, from O'Neill et al. 2018, A good life for all within planetary boundaries, Nature Sustainability 1, pp. 88 to 95, and the study's data at goodlife.leeds.ac.uk. Above 1 means the country is beyond the boundary, shown in bold. The figures are based on data from before the study.
The planetary boundaries are an attempt to state how much carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphorus, water and land humanity can use without risking fundamental change to the Earth's systems. Researchers at the University of Leeds divided the boundaries equally among all people and compared them with what each country uses. Sweden was beyond the boundary for six of seven measures, as were Denmark, Finland and Norway; only freshwater was within.
A follow-up with six measures from 1992 to 2015 reached the same conclusion: Sweden was beyond all six boundaries in 2015 (Fanning et al. 2022). In that study the carbon boundary shrinks every year in line with the remaining carbon budget, so the ratio can rise even as emissions fall.
How much forest is felled, grows and is protected.
Million cubic metres of stem volume per year. Gross felling from the Swedish Forest Agency's statistics (JO0312), 2025 preliminary. Growth on productive forest land outside formally protected areas from SLU's National Forest Inventory; the year is the middle year of a five year period and the latest figure is for 2022. The two do not cover exactly the same area and are best compared as trends. The peak in 2005 is storm Gudrun.
Net removal of greenhouse gases in the whole land use sector (LULUCF), million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's statistics. The whole series is recalculated every year, and uncertainty is large since these are small changes in very large carbon stocks.
Share of forest area under strict protection (FOREST EUROPE classes 1.1 and 1.2) in 2025, calculated from the Nordic Council of Ministers' Nordic Forest Statistics 2026, table 19 (CC BY 4.0). Countries report differently, so the comparison is approximate. Denmark is not in the table.
In Sweden 88 million cubic metres of forest were felled in 2024, about a third more than in 1990. Growth has long exceeded felling, and the growing stock has roughly doubled since the 1920s. Two thirds of felling is final felling, where essentially the whole stand is cut. Continuous cover forestry, where the land is never clearcut, was practised in 2025 on about 3 percent of productive forest land according to the Swedish Forest Agency.
Forests and land absorbed a net 54 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2024, about as much as all territorial emissions. The uptake fell from 61 million tonnes in 2011 to 40 million tonnes in 2020, as felling rose and growth fell, and has since increased again. The EU target for Sweden is a net removal of 47 million tonnes in 2030.
6.2 percent of productive forest land is formally protected, as nature reserves, national parks or habitat protection, and another 6.0 percent is voluntarily set aside by forest owners. More than a third of the formal protection is in the forests near the mountains; below the mountains the share is about 4 percent. Counting all forest and strict protection, Sweden is at 7.8 percent, below Finland but above Norway and the EU average.
Red-listed species
2,235 of the 5,217 species on the 2025 Red List depend on the forest, and 1,100 of them are threatened. The number of red-listed species has risen since 2020, but part of the difference is due to better knowledge and changed assessments.
Clearcuts
There are no official statistics on how much of the felling is done as clearcutting. The often quoted figure of 97 percent comes from a parliamentary motion, not from the statistics.
Growing stock
There are 3,370 million cubic metres of timber standing on productive forest land, twice as much as in 1926, when the National Forest Inventory began.
How much ore is mined and how much waste it creates.
Million tonnes of ore mined per year from the Geological Survey of Sweden's Mining statistics 2025, table 1. Iron ore is sorted ore, without waste rock. Other ore is mainly copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver.
Waste from mining and other mineral extraction, kilos per inhabitant in 2022, from Eurostat (env_wasgen, CC BY 4.0). Most of it is waste rock, mined to reach the ore, and tailings, what remains once the metal has been extracted.
Sweden mined 80 million tonnes of ore in 2025 in 13 metal mines, about twice as much as in the early 2000s. Sweden is the EU's largest producer of iron ore. The same year there were 164 million tonnes of mining waste according to the Geological Survey, and 69 percent of it was landfilled.
According to Eurostat, Swedish mines in 2022 accounted for a quarter of all mining waste in the EU and for 77 percent of all waste in Sweden. Much of it comes from Aitik near Gällivare, one of Europe's largest copper mines, where the ore holds so little metal that almost everything mined becomes waste. What the state-owned LKAB earns and pays out is on State-owned companies. Norway and Denmark rank low mainly because they have few metal mines.
LKAB
State-owned LKAB mines iron ore in Kiruna, Malmberget and Svappavaara and produced 25.9 million tonnes of iron ore products in 2025, most of it as pellets. The mines beneath Kiruna and Malmberget mean that large parts of the towns are being moved.
Boliden
Boliden milled 39 million tonnes of ore at Aitik in 2025 and 3.6 million tonnes at Garpenberg, which mines zinc, lead and silver. Aitik started in 1968 at 2 million tonnes a year.
Kallak, Gállok
In March 2022 the government granted an exploitation concession for an iron ore mine at Kallak near Jokkmokk, against the will of the Sami reindeer herding communities. UN special rapporteurs had urged Sweden to say no. The Supreme Administrative Court let the decision stand in 2024. The company has not yet applied for an environmental permit.
The EU raw materials act
Under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, at least 10 percent of the strategic raw materials the EU uses should be extracted within the Union by 2030. Four Swedish projects have been designated strategic, among them LKAB's rare earth elements at Malmberget and Per Geijer in Kiruna and the Viscaria copper mine.
Exploration
801 exploration permits to search for minerals were valid at the end of 2025, compared with 587 in 2021. 115 new ones were granted during the year.
Where things are moving in the right direction.
Sulphur
Sulphur dioxide emissions have fallen from 102,000 tonnes in 1990 to 14,000 tonnes in 2024, by 86 percent. Nitrogen oxides have fallen by 65 percent.
Acidified lakes
15 percent of lakes were acidified in 1990 and 5 percent in the latest survey 2019 to 2024, which uses new criteria. In south-western Sweden the share is still 30 percent. Sulphur deposition has fallen by 65 to 90 percent since 2001.
Renewable energy
65 percent of the energy used in Sweden in 2025 was renewable, the largest share in the EU, where the average was 26 percent. In 2004 the share was 38 percent. Norway, which is not in the EU, was at 82 percent.
Emissions per person
Consumption-based emissions per Swede have fallen by 35 percent since 2008, and territorial emissions by a third since 1990, while the economy has grown.
And what has not
Recycling of municipal waste was 46 percent in 2024, below the EU average of 49 percent. The material footprint has barely moved in fifteen years, and Sweden is well beyond five of the planetary boundaries.
Where the figures come from.
- Global Footprint Network, Country Overshoot Days 2026 and Earth Overshoot Day 2026; Footprint Data Foundation, National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts 2026 (Lo et al. 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Criticism of the footprint: Blomqvist et al. 2013, PLoS Biology; Giampietro and Saltelli 2014 and the reply Goldfinger et al. 2014, Ecological Indicators.
- Eurostat (CC BY 4.0): material footprint env_ac_rme, waste env_wasgen, renewable energy nrg_ind_ren and recycling cei_wm011.
- Statistics Sweden (CC0): consumption-based emissions from the environmental accounts (MI1301), territorial emissions and air pollutants from the Swedish EPA's statistics (MI0107, MI0108) and population (BE0101). Emissions per person are calculated from Statistics Sweden's figures. Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on consumption emissions.
- Global Carbon Budget 2025 via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0): consumption-based carbon dioxide per person.
- O'Neill et al. 2018 and Fanning et al. 2022, Nature Sustainability, with data from the University of Leeds: planetary boundaries by country.
- Forests: Swedish Forest Agency, felling, continuous cover and protected forest; SLU National Forest Inventory, growth and growing stock; Statistics Sweden, forest land for nature conservation 2025; Swedish EPA, net removals from land use; Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic Forest Statistics 2026 (CC BY 4.0); SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Red List 2025 (CC0); EU Regulation 2023/839 on LULUCF.
- SGU, Mining statistics 2025 (Periodic publications 2026:1): ore mined, mining waste, mines and exploration permits. LKAB's and Boliden's reports for 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court's judgment in case 3893-22 and the European Commission's decisions on strategic projects.