Helping customers reduce their own carbon footprint
“Gasum’s purpose for cleaner energy and their strategy to develop low emission transport are in line with my personal mission: to decarbonize the transport industry,” says Sharareh Edström, new Director of Traffic Sweden Gasum.
Edström says that she is proud of the platform Gasum has built, and excited to continue the work: helping customers reduce their own carbon footprint and attain Sweden’s ambitious goal of becoming the first fossile free nation.
Rapidly increased demand for low emission road transport: I joined Gasum in June 2021 with great enthusiasm. After 13 years in the automotive industry within sales, business development and as Managing Director in whole sales and retail setting I am familiar with the every day life of transport buyers, tendering organs and transportation companies. It motivates me to see how rapidly the demand for low emission solutions has increased among all stakeholders in the transport industry. Gasum has done great work to understand customer demand and has mobilized rapidly to meet the customer needs and with that made it easier for transporters to increase their profitability and decrease their environmental impact.
When it comes to sustainability, I believe that actions speak louder than words. The Paris Agreement in 2015 was the needed driving force for many. To me, it gave the opportunity to explore new income channels with sustainability as starting point and led me to research different solutions for reaching a cleaner future in practice as well. That is how I got to understand the urgent necessity to implement circularity in every part of the value chain and especially the economic, social, and environmental benefits of biogas. You can imagine how proud I am to represent Gasum, a company that already has many own biogas production plants in the Nordics and is aiming to bring 7 TWh of renewable gas to the market by 2027.
Together with partners and clear co-operation models: I strongly believe that partnership is the fastest way to shift tracks and also the way I approach problems —by bringing together the right people, right ideas and finding solutions beneficial for all parties as well as make sure that things are happening as planned. Gas is a solution that is already available in the Nordics. However, the awareness of this is still limited. It is clear that different parties are needed to accelerate the growth of gas in road transport. My task at Gasum is to set the structure needed as well as build co-operation models to ensure successful scaling of our business and carrying out Gasum’s purpose: cleaner energy to our customers.
We live in a time of great innovations where new technologies are being developed. The emerging technologies e.g., electricity and hydrogen, will have the same development steps as gas once had. The most important aspect is to actively develop these solutions and build trust for cleaner solutions amongst users and buyers. Gas is already available, environmentally friendly solution and a crucial steppingstone towards attaining a fossil free future with clean power and sustainable technologies. It is crucial to act today with technologies that are available now to decarbonize the transport industry. We must remember that the future of transportation is eclectic and gas as a fuel will always be a relevant and profitable solution for transport companies.
Position: Director, Traffic Sweden
Education: M.Sc BA, specialized in organisational development and internationalisation