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Sweden plans to be an oil-free economy by 2020, setting a fifteen year limit on switching to renewable sources of energy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1704954,00.html
Actually as far as I remember from another source, Sweden did not decide to replace fossil with renewables. It just decided to become fossil-free, quitely leaving the nuclear option open. Of course they did not announce they will build nukes, because the public opinion is far from ready to accept it. But I have that little feeling that they know they will have to do it in the near future - that is if they want to remain an industrilized country, which I'm certain they do.
from www.temo.se
Abandon, Keep until worn out, Replace if needed, Build more
2005 13% 34% 30% 19%
2004 16% 31% 31% 18%
2003 14% 32% 34% 16%
2002 19% 35% 28% 15%
2001 20% 36% 27% 11%
But some politicians and partys are not ready for nuclear power.
The currently ruling Socialist party S needs the greens and the communists, sorry left party, to rule and they demand that they say that nuclear power should be abandoned and that no new reactors should be planned. S used to be pro nuclear and the industrial labour union who has been and still partly is a siamese twin to S do not like the anti nuclear and thus anti industry pose.
The opposition is an alliance of four parties, M (my party), Kd, Fp and C.
M is largest and has been strongly in favor of nuclear power but now we say little to please C.
Kd, switched sides to pro nuclear a few years ago.
Fp, is strongly pro nuclear, build two reactors ASAP, I like them. ;)
C, has for 25+ years been strongly anti nuclear but is trying to change, their core voters would benefit immensy on a larger biomass fuel industry.
The opposition to S use to be a mess but now it is better coordinated then any previous election. Nuclear power is one of the hard remaining issues in the alliance and one of the biggest political traumas in Sweden. I think it will work out ok. But I am a little worried about S making Peak Oil into an election issue in a way that hurts the good ideas when they loose the election.
Perhaps do what has been done elsewhere, build a joint nuclear complex with the Finns. An ideal location might be on the northern Baltic, in Finland but near Sweden. Or just next to their newest reactor, build a Swedish owned copy.
Although I also know that the Finns do not trust the Swedes (in their war with the Russians you sent them bad ammunition, etc.) but if they get most of the construction and operating jobs it could work.
Seems like small nations are more aware of what the term energetic independance means, though maybe in part this is a matter of national pride. It used to look more like a harmless play-around before, but with the advent of PO and Global Warming and countries starting to switch to coal, things started to get gravely serious.
> Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.
Distributed steam and geothermal power is almost unheard of. They have mixed us up with Iceland.
The district heating systems use hot water (90-120 degress C) and the major heat sources is biomass, industrial waste heat, garbage incineration and soon natural gas fired combined heat and power. The peking district heating boilers for chilly days use oil but wood pellet will perhaps replace oil.
The nuclear phase out is thank a deity a charade. Two reactors are mothballed and could be restarted after serious upgrades. Upgrading would be needed since the security standards are a moving target and they are no longer up to code. The other ten reactors are all recieving life lenght extensionings and upratings replacing the capacity lost by the closure and mothballing of the two Barsebäck reactors that irritated Danish greens. The investments into nuclear power are nearly as big as they were when the reactors were originally built.
Additional ramblings:
Its election year in Sweden, this initiative is also part of the election campaign. But the need for initative is large and we have good opportunities, its only to change government so the focus is better. Now I am going to write a letter to an editor in a local paper calling for a stop to the subsidizing of wood pellet burners and heat pumps. It is a waste of tax money since they are already well established on the market and the economy in using them is so good that people anyway switch. It would be better to use the subsidies to install public plug-in-hybrid charging outlets or help establish FT-diesel from black liquor plants or experimental ethanol from celulose pilot plants. Damn socialists trying to buy home owner votes by giving them $180 Million in unneded subsidies if they vote left. We are a people bought with our own tax money.
But jokes aside, Kokums has done a lot of good work with stirling engines, and even put some in submarines! You people should look seriously at stirling-biomass electricity generation, which can work well in relatively small sizes around 100kW, and even down to 1kW. I am sure you know that using high temp combustion for just space heating is a thermodynamic atrocity and should be avoided, and I have heard you say you are using a lot of biomass for energy.
By the way, I almost sold Volvo on a stirling truck auxiliary power unit many years ago, but they quit when they heard the Germans had a patent on that use--or that was their story. Anyhow, I certainly enjoyed visiting Sweden!
A problem with small scale biomass fueled heating in Sweden is that most of those boilers are not run all of the time. You need a small district heating system to have meaningful use of the heat and you need the income from usefull heat since the electricity prices are too low to run a micro scale powerplant only for the electricity. There is a limited number of users for small systems.
I have not done this, but am tempted to try. Figure all the available energy from all heating processes in Sweden, and the electricity that could be got from it, and then compare this to the output of those nuclear power plants that people are arguing about. Might be an interesting exercise. But others could do it much better than I.
But I forget myself. Congratulations, TOD, for your initiative and service to the great cause! Are you being paid enough?
Well, "there lies the rub," as Shakespeare might say about our capitlaist system. Aside from banner ads an the left side of TOD and possible book deals, where could payment come from and who would do the paying?
Hardly anyone knows that Peak Oil exists, let alone that TOD exists, save for the 1776 patriotic plus one worldwide who have signed on to TOD and the silent majority who watch from a distance.
(For you Brits out there, 1776 is some sort of magic date the Yanks celebrate in hopeless belief they had won freedom from King George. Alas, George the Foolish 43rd is still here, pillaging this continent for all she's got.)