What a great step forward!
Sweden plans to be world’s first oil-free economy
· 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy
· Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday February 8, 2006
The Guardian
Evergreen forest in Sweden
Evergreen… Sweden will develop biofuels from its forests. Photograph: Mattias Klum/Getty Images
Typical Sweden.
Go Sweden! The land where coasting, gliding, seat drag and a few other unicycling skills were invented…
That’s all nice but future energy plans do need to include nuclear power. The reluctance of the environmental crowd to acknowledge that nuclear power is needed in any plan that works to minimize or eliminate the use of fossil fuels is going to rain on their parade.
It’s all nice that Sweden has geothermal sources for heat, but they’re going to need more than that to meet electricity needs, especially if more people move to electric automobiles like plug-in hybrids.
So they are going to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. How is that going to improve the environment? Don’t biofuels have the same effect on global warming?
Looks like they’re going too much for the feel good rather than working towards a plan that will actually work or make a real difference.
This sounds like an ecomonically motivated plan with a good measure of eco-friendly rhetoric layered on top to make everyone feel good. Instead of altering the oil economy by force (like some governments 
), Sweden wants to remove itself altogether.
Sweden Rock!
green fuel for everyone!
I believe Brazil is currently the worldwide leader for ethanol production and use. Their cars use flex-fuel technology (they can switch between gas and ethanol). With Brazilian ethanol selling for 45% less per liter than gasoline in 2003 and 2004, flex-fuel cars caught on like iPods. In 2003, flex-fuel had 6% of the market for Brazilian-made cars (from manufacturers including Ford and VW), and automakers were expecting the technology’s share to zoom to 30% in 2005. That proved wildly conservative: As of last December, 73% of cars sold in Brazil came with flex fuel engines. They now have 1.3 million flex-fuel cars on the road and Brazilians have ready access to what’s known in Portuguese as alcool at nearly all of the country’s 34,000 gas stations.
Ethanol’s rise has far-reaching effects on the economy. Not only does Brazil no longer have to import oil but an estimated $69 billion that would go to the Middle East or elsewhere has stayed in the country and is revitalizing once-depressed rural areas.
Near the prosperous farm town of Sertaozinho, some 200 miles north of Sao Paolo, the fuel that will fill the tanks of nearly three million Brazilian cars in a few months is still waist-high. Lush sugar-cane fields stretch as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the towering white mills where the stalks of the plants will be turned into ethanol when the harvest begins in March. Brazil has the perfect geography for growing sugar cane, the most energy-rich ethanol feedstock known to science. More than 250 mills have sprouted in southeastern Brazil, and another 50 are under construction, at a cost of about $100 million each.
Even though the US will never be a sugar-cane powerhouse like Brazil, investors now view Rio as the future of fuel. “I hate to see the US ten years behind Brazil, but that’s probably where we are,” says one shrewd American freethinker, Ted Turner.
I think they’re going to keep the nuclear plants they already have. Otherwise it’s going to be very hard to find alternative sources of electricity. Sweden (i think) currently exports electricity from nuclear and hydro-electric plants.
No, not with respect to greenhouse gasses. The plants used for biofuels suck up the same amount of CO2 when they grow as they release when burned.
he he! Our science teacher told us about cars that were powered by only water! You just fill them up and go with regular water found anywhere. I cant remember the location where most people have these water powered cars. It was somewhere cold, Alaska maybe? i thought It was a different country though than the U.S.
sweet!
go Swedes!
you rule!
I once heard about a guy who powered his car on dead cats…no joke.
[QUOTE=john_childs]
So they are going to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. How is that going to improve the environment? Don’t biofuels have the same effect on global warming?
QUOTE]
I think the idea is that by growing the fuel: forests, oilseed rape, whatever, the plants fix the carbon from the atmosphere whilst growing. Fossil fuels merely burn from a carbon reservoir. Renewable is the word.
A laudable approach from Sweden, but with a population of just 9 million it ain’t gonna be a world changing experience. Whilst the USA refuses to even consider Kyoto, and other countries just play around the edges, the problem is not going to diminish.
The problem at the moment is that one cannot have a politically correct AND effective method of dealing with our environmental problems, not unless a lot of people lose their idealistic and economic stances.
Granted, but it is a start. Misquoting and selectively reading naysayers notwithstanding, it will (hopefully) act as a powerfull example to other goverments that it is possible.
Ditto for the Brazil example.
gå Sverige!
For sure!
It’s a damn sight better than any other governments are doing at the mo and will serve as a good model for other countries wanting to do the same.
For all you who have been angry that unicycling has not been included in the Winter Olympics:
You may be happy to learn that, due to global warming, the last and final winter olympics has started today… 
Billy
Please sign the attached petition to outlaw oilseed rape in Sweden. Oilseeds are safe from this horror in every other industrialized nation.
C’mon Sweden, get in step!
Personally, I don’t think global warming is that big a problem…there have been climate fluctuations since the earth was here…congrats to Sweden for trying to get themselves away from oil though…if only America would stop “bring addicted to oil”…
who knows, maybe we’d finally get out of Iraq…
Sounds like hydrogen fuel cell technology. The hydrogen can be gotten from water, by electrolysis. But you don’t put water into the fuel tank. Production of all the hydrogen needed by fuel cell cars will still require lots of energy, but this doesn’t have to be oil-powered. The nice thing about these cars? The exhaust is water, in the form of water vapor.
This technology is under development, but I don’t think it’s in widespread use anywhere yet. Pilot programs and prototypes only.
I’m amazed by the Brazil information, of their success with ethanol. Maybe someone should tell George Bush about this! If manufacturers can make flex-fuel engines for thousands of cars in Brazil, why not everywhere? Let’s get that ball rolling!
I agree with you, 100%. Not to be a nit-picker (or is it knit-picker? well in either case…), but they have 1.3 million flex fuel cars on the road, NOT several thousand!!!
At the very least… Hawaii should be following the example set by Brazil. Hawaii has an ideal climate and geography for sugar cane production. As a matter of fact they once had a thriving sugar cane industry. Unfortunately, there are no longer any sugar cane farms left in Hawaii… but if the government started a sugar cane initiative there, they could probably produce enough to make the entire state nearly completely independent of oil (for automobiles, anyway). That one is just a no-brainer!
I’ve tried to find out what they’re going to replace the fossil fuels with. I haven’t been all that successful. I’m not sure there’s a plan or if they’ve just set an ambitious goal to see how far they can get.
I found is a report saying that by 2020 they’ll be able to produce about 250TW per year from renewable sources. That’s about 80% of what they currently use for heating and industry etc. They removed transport from the equation for some reason.
The report talked about replacing nuclear power too, but that leaves nothing but improved energy efficiency to take care of the last 20% and the energy used for transportation.