How Sweden balances emission cuts with economic growth – DW – 08/12/2024
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Sweden has cut 80% of its net emissions since 1990 and still managed an impressive economic growth. What's the secret?

The Scandinavian country has some natural advantages. 70% of Sweden is forest land. And forests are very useful when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions because they remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The country is also blessed with a great deal of wind, as well as mountains, streams and lakes — perfect for renewable energy.

But it wasn’t just hitting the natural resources jackpot that got the country to where it is now. Sweden realized its natural potential early on and started investing in renewable energy sources much earlier than many other countries.

“Sweden has had hydropower for more than a century,” according to Goldmann.

They also cut out fossil fuels from their energy mix back in the 1970s, when the global oil crisis hit. When countries were looking for other sources of energy, Sweden substantially built out nuclear energy.

Today, almost 70% of Sweden’s electricity comes from renewables, especially hydropower and wind. The rest of its electricity demand is met by nuclear power. This means their greenhouse gas emissions for electricity production are almost zero right now.

“So, they are almost not using any fossil fuels for producing electricity. If you compare it with other countries, that’s a whole other world,” said Jorre De Schrijver, an energy expert from the European Environment Agency.

And it’s not just electricity that’s now produced without fossil fuels in Sweden — that also goes for heating and energy-intense industrial processes.

  • Tobberone@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    That’s true. It is also true that power was generated to support the polish market when half of Sweden’s nuclear reactors had to be taken out of production due to some malfunction during a bad cold front in December.

    Having said that, electricity is still scarce during winter which means that a lot of it is used for heating. That must end and ideally in a way that let us use the energy excess during summer for heating during winter.

    • MelchiorEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      Sweden has a lot of district heating already. Storing heat in form of hot water is rather easy and cheap. Large water tanks have lower outside volume and insulation is rather cheap. So one can produce heat in summer and use it in winter.

      • Tobberone@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Well, Yes and no. Water is a great storage, but it is hard to insulate and very corrosive in the long run. And on the grand scale of things, the amount of water that needs to be heated for city scale applications are hard to deal with. There are cities which has connected huge caves to the district heating system, but the amount of energy stored there is rather insufficient. A case in point, Mälarenergi claims that their energy store, the size of about 120 Olympic swimming pools heated to 95 degrees C, would power a city of about 100 000 people for about two weeks in somewhat benign weather conditions.

        Winter is longer, though, and we need to find ways of storing more heat for longer to be able to make a real dent in demand. There are other methods though, and even better is that some of them doesn’t need any carbon what so ever to be viable. And with the new EU directives (EED and EPBD) the foundations and Incentives has been given to start the race for better (district) heating solutions.