Sweden to be oil free by 2030
March 13, 2009 by Matt Brogan
Sweden’s government, who had previously announced the country would be oil free by 2020, today says it has deferred that goal by another 10 years.
The country has invested heavily in renewable fuels in recent times which is noticeable, to us at least, by such vehicles as the SAAB 9-5 BioPower we reviewed last year.
By 2030 Sweden aims to have all vehicles able to run on renewable fuels – such as ethanol – or on clean electricity.
The majority of Sweden’s domestic and industrial power is already sourced from nuclear and renewable means with domestic heating sourced from industrial waste energy and geothermal heat.
This shows the country’s enterprise in other sectors but not so in the transport industry which is, for now, still heavily dependent on oil.
A move to renewable fuels or clean electricity within two decades therefore may seem like a bit of a leap, but with a government so willing to invest in forcing vehicular products to comply with its goals it would seem the future of motoring could to a large degree come from the Swedes.
Question is, will SAAB and Volvo survive long enough for the plans to bear fruit? Only time will tell.
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Impressive if they do it, I wonder how much this will affect their total Co2 emissions. Considering Australia and Sweden have similar GDP per captia this makes mr Rudds 5% emissions cut by 2020 look a seriously lame.
Our government would seem to comparitively lethargic.
I wonder how much the Swedish government relies on tax from oil products. Our government is addicted to the revenue from oil.
I hope we can take a page from their book.
Why would we take a page from their book?
They have rescheduled their target by 10 years, by 2025 they will have rescheduled it another couple of times.
All this CO2s/global warming is the biggest con of the modern age. It’s probably the biggest con in the history of man.
What exactly was it that caused the globe to warm at the end of the last ice age? It wasn’t humans burning fuel, that’s for sure. It was some other set of factors, similar to what has caused the mini ice-ages and warming since then.
None of it caused by humans, just like now.
Easy to do when you have 10 nuclear reactor power stations providing almost half of the county’s energy needs!
The greenies are between a boulder and an unyielding surface.
Pollution-free transport can’t exist without a huge dependance on nuclear power generation, and they know it.
And it’s not like nuclear power is green anyway…
nuclear power is compared to others very clean.other than radiation there are no emissions
Toxic waste isn’t clean mate. And it will be dangerous for thousands of years. Also ask residents of Chernobyl what they think of nuclear plants ;-)
“All this CO2s/global warming is the biggest con of the modern age” Impressive ignorance Reckless i’d advise you start looking at Ice core data before posting again.
“Easy to do when you have 10 nuclear reactor power stations” yeah right, in 2006 Sweden produced 80,000 GWh of electricity from renewables alone (IE not including Nuclear). How much did we produce in the same year?? Less than 10,000.
Doesn’t matter how you look at it, Sweden is leading the charge while we’re in the dark ages.
Look at http://news.nationalgeographic.....rming.html The MARS rover with all its Solar panels must be causing global warming on Mars.
And Lazybones, why are they leading the charge while we’re in the dark ages? What if its economically viable for us to use cheaper more cost effective fossil fuels for longer? There is the cost associated with setting up a proper electricity network for automotive use, the cost of using food producing land for fuel. What should be focused on is finding cheaper sources of energy not just to reduce CO2 emissions.
Id rather have some sort of explosion fueled by anything flammable under my bonnet because it sounds better than some lame whirring from an electric motor.
lazybones it is not that simple
Sweden plans to get the vast majority of it’s power from nuclear and hydro. Sweden is leading nothing they have taken the EASY way out.
The Greenies HATE BOTH those power sources and will NOT support their increased use here.
So where do we go without ruining the economy here?
Dan – there is a large stigma attached to nuclear power plants, however it IS commonly recongnised as the cleanest source of power currently available on a mass scale (ofcourse there is solar and wind however the technology is not yet available for these to be realistic on a mass scale).
Yes the waste is dangerous for thousands of years, but so is the batteries in a Toyota Prius… provided that it is disposed of in a safe and responsible manner there is no issues, it certainly doesn’t contaminate the atmosphere like it is claimed that fossil fuels do.
Finally yes there has been one major accident with Chernobyl, but this is just one accident in all the time nuclear power plants has been used and there are hundreds of them around the world. As far as an accident or failure rate is concerned, it is actually considered by experts to be the safest form of mass power production, as well as the greenest.
Do your research mate, do be blinded by the ill-informed propoganda produced by the green movement who only refuse to accept nuclear power because they have been against it for so long that they fear losing total credibility by accepting it.
The once potentially un-safe technology associated with Nuclear power production has moved on considerably in the 23 years since the Chernobyl disaster, it IS time this issue is thoroughly re-examined in Australia. The previous government was willing to consider it but unfortunately Rudd won’t go anywhere near it because of the Greenies and we will continue on with Coal powered power plants which have a massively bigger environmental impact then Nuclear power… sounds like the Greenies don’t even know what they are fighting for!
the thing that really infuriates me with the Greenies is that not only are they against nuclear power which is brilliant from a carbon emissions point of view, but their alternatives are all based on technology that is decades away from being even slightly realistic, so instead they are quite happy for us to keep using coal which has a much bigger environmental impact then nuclear power for the decades untill their solar powered ideas are realistic! They are complete spaz’s
I agree and disagree with you Richo. I do agree with you, that greenies have got no clue. Believe me, they hate coal. I lost count how many times we had to lock down our floors so that greenies couldn’t come up stairs and vandalise the place, like they have managed to do a few times already (I work for a coal mining and energy company). THey crap on about how coal is bad, and how we should stop using it. Yet they cannot provide you with a realistic alternative to this. Sure, renewable this, renewable that. It is being done. It’s not viable though, very much more expensive. Public does not want to pay extra for electricity. Also, there is a problem with the efficiency of manufacturing renewable energy power plants, as it takes as much energy to produce a solar panel or a wind turbine, as they will ever generate in their life time. That is something that needs to be addressed, whether more efficient production, or longer life span. Either way, none of these renewable power supplies are yet ready for full scale implementation, so we still need to rely on traditional methods to produce electricity.
I do disagree with you about nuclear. I am no greenie by any means. But when you say “as long as it is disposed of properly” it’s just rubbish, sorry. You can’t just dispose of nuclear waste and forget about it. It doesn’t just go away. It will exist, and be dangerous, for generations to come, looooong after you, me, and others here are gone. It needs to be stored somewhere for all this time, during which anything can happen. Also, while Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident in history, it’s not the only one, far from it. There has been plenty of others where radiation has leaked out to a great extent. There has also been plenty of near misses and so on. Those experts you refer to, are obviously sitting on the payroll of certain bodies with interest in nuclear energy. Personally, I am still sceptical about it all. Also, did you know mining uranium takes a lot more energy than it takes to mine coal? Due to the fact that it is less concentrated, so more and more ground needs to be dug up to extract it. WHile typical coal mine uses about a million litres of diesel a month to run, I am guessing it would be a lot more for a uranium mine, to extract same amount of energy out of the ground. Either way, I’d rather have a coal power plant in my neighbourhood than a nuclear power plant. But that’s my own personal opinion. :)
I think that Sweden will succed and that Volvo will stick around because most cars in Sweden are Volvos. Sweeds love Volvo simple as that. Personally being a Sweed i love Volvos, see. I think that this plan should be world wide and not just in Sweden.
Dan – no offence mate, but i don’t think you can be entirely objective, or anyone can really take your arguments too seriously when your employment is dependant on coal power generation which obviously would be crippled should we introduce nuclear plants…
Uranium is extracted from the ground, enriched and used as fuel in a nuclear plant. Once spent, the fuel gets reprocessed or smelted with iron and encased in concrete. It can then be deposited where it came from – back in the ground.
Uranium is present in sea water and granite.
Uranium is sourced through a variety of means. In WA they have seams of “yellow cake” a uranium concentrate.It is extracted by pumping water into the seams where the water dissolves it. The slurry is then removed and transported for refining. Most of the water is reused. It is a very efficient process.
Basic energy fact: the fission of an atom of uranium produces 10 million times the energy produced by the combustion of an atom of carbon from coal.
Fact: the input energy (production energy) is 4.8 percent of output energy if gaseous diffusion is used to enrich uranium and 1.7 percent if newer centrifuge technology is used.
About one cubic meter of toxic waste per year is generated by a nuclear power plant.
Chernobyl was an old style reactor. In terms of immediate deaths it was a rather small disaster. 31 people died. Cave-ins in coal mines often kill hundreds.
Leaked radiation meant about 20 square miles of land became uninhabitable for a long time. This isn’t very big.
Modern designs mean that this type of accident would almost certainly never happen ever again.
In the 1970s, manufacturing a solar cell required about as much energy as the cell could produce over its 20-year lifetime. Improvements in efficiency mean that today’s solar panels can “pay back” in only 1 to 3 years the energy needed to make them. Future designs will slash this figure again.
Coal will be Australia’s primary source of power for at least the next 100 years because the government gets big revenue from it and it creates employment.
We most certainly can take a page from Sweden’s book but political will means we won’t.
BTW I like your world Dan – you can make up your own “facts”.
Do they breathe oxygen on your planet?
Forgot to mention that another source of uranium is coal. The idea of “clean coal” is to remove the uranium and other “contaminants” before the coal is burnt because otherwise burning coal pumps tonnes of uranium into the atmosphere.
Richo – “your employment is dependant on coal power generation which obviously would be crippled should we introduce nuclear plants…”
Nope, not at all. My specialty is finance and tax, not coal mining. I’m giving you my objective view. Personally I don’t care. I can find employment anywhere else easy. I’ve had the above view before I started working for this place.
Simon – “Chernobyl was an old style reactor. In terms of immediate deaths it was a rather small disaster. 31 people died. Cave-ins in coal mines often kill hundreds.”
Chernobyl was in a third world country. People who die in coal mines usually happens in a third world countries. Most coal mines in aus are open cut, with no such danger. Given that such accidents happen mostly in third world countries are due to the lack of safety standards and procedures, it would be even more frightening if all of a sudden all third world coutnries went nuclear. No thanks!
Simon, I totally understand that the reactor technology has greatly improved. With that I don’t have as much problem as with toxic nuclear waste. Ask yourself this. If you think it is so safe, would you be happy to store some of it in your own backyard, amongst your family??
And I do realise radiation occurs everywhere. Difference is, natural occuring radiation and nuclear waste radiation, the difference in strength is couple of thousand times higher or whatever.
Dan says: “Ask yourself this. If you think it is so safe, would you be happy to store some of it in your own backyard, amongst your family??”
Come on Dan now thats just a stupid hypothetical, ofcourse its not something you would want dumped in your own backyard, what we are talking about is the responsible and safe dumping of the waste in areas that will have negligable environmental impact and is a long way away from the population and you know it mate, your just being frankly rediculous right there!
Mate they have been doing this for decades now and there has never ever been a problem with the disposal of the waste.. however there IS a CONSIDERABLE problem with the disposal of the waste from coal powered power stations now isn’t there? Thats just goes straight up into the atmosphere now doesn’t it? Geez that seems a lot worse then incasing it in cement and putting it KILOMETERS under ground and significant distances away from the population.
Seriously man… ofcourse its not perfect, but there is little doubt that it is the lesser of two evils, and by a HUGE margin…
Dan if you live in certain parts of either SA or WA there is a reasonable possibility that there is atleast some uranium in your backyard – sure its about 20 odd Kilometeres underground but hey as the drought worsens and the climate changes it could gradually leak out and make its way closer to the surface.
Because According to a number of articles in various geological natural resource magazines etc; Australia has the biggest richest deposits of Uranium in the world and most of its in SA or WA.
In terms of power generation I think Australia should look at either Windfarms or “Hot Rock” Technology as it’s much safer and less harmful to the environment
Natural gas is another optiom given that we have “trucjkloads” of it off the West Australia however the gummint has sold virtually all of it to China
In terms of countries looking at alternative sources of Power for their cars [given that this is an automotive website and not a power utility site].
Sweden would definitely have to be a world leader.
Apparently the buses over there are gradually switching over to either Hydrogen or Natural gas – that is as Shell opens or upgrades service stations which can provide the new fuels.
Richo said – “have been doing this for decades now and there has never ever been a problem with the disposal of the waste..”
You sure about that? THere’s a reason why Australia was approached recently to be the global nuclear waste dump. The whole world has no where safe enough to put it! At the moment huge quantities of this stuff are stored at the power plants themeselves. THe problem is in finding a safe repository, one that has ALL the following qualities : geologically stable, politically stable, and isolated enough from the population. Australia it seems is the only one that has all three. I might be wrong, but there is not one safe nuclear repository KILOMETERS underground yet. It’s all theory/works in progress…
Richo said – “there IS a CONSIDERABLE problem with the disposal of the waste from coal powered power stations now isn’t there? Thats just goes straight up into the atmosphere now doesn’t it?”
Doesn’t have to be. Have you heard of geosequestration? Lots of work is being done in that regard.
ALso, new power plants that are built are a lot cleaner than the old 60s designs too.
Wheelnut, in regards to the deposits, seriously, for a deposit 20 km underground to leak out on the surface, it would take thousands of years of erosion! That’s just a ridicullous argument you have put forward mate!
A lot of the comments on here are basically personal opinions, nothing based on fact (sure, a lot of quoted information from other, unidentified sources, which is always dangerous). It’s always the same when it comes to global warming debates – people can’t remove the emotion from what side of the argument they are on, and be totally unbiased in the analysis of any new data. People only tend to quote information from sources that back-up their side of the argument, while they totally condemn any information which supports the opposite to what they believe.
For example, where Simon quoted this information in one of his comments above:
“Uranium is sourced through a variety of means. In WA they have seams of “yellow cake” a uranium concentrate.It is extracted by pumping water into the seams where the water dissolves it. The slurry is then removed and transported for refining. Most of the water is reused. It is a very efficient process.”
Well, I take issue with this because it probably isn’t a very efficient process. Based on the description of this extraction process, there would seem to be no guarantee that 100% containment of the water being pumped into the ‘yellow cake’ seams. This is particulalry dangerous because there would be an extraordinary risk of leaching of uranium through the pumped water, and if not 100% contained it would simply leach down to deeper levels within the soil/rock profile and end up in the groundwater reserves. I’d asusme that the groundwater reservoirs in WA are being used for stock or crop irrigation, and potentially for human drinking water purposes. And given the apparent residual and durable nature of uranium, particlarly in a concentrated slurry form, I would think this is quite dangerous. It is common knowledge that the soil prfile in WA is particularly sandy i.e. permeable, meaning the leachate/water/contaminants are quite mobile when water is introduced.
So, it’s all good to have a knowledgeable debate about the subject, but let’s make sure we keep an open mind and consider all the facts. Otherwise we just end up arguing for the sake of arguing……which I think a lot of the commenters on this website actually enjoy by the way! :-)
Hal, what do you think happens when it rains? When the earth’s crust moves? When the ocean erodes the land?
You are fogetting radioactive substances occur naturally all over the world. It is not as static as you seem to believe.
You are right it’s easy to make up facts – my point exactly. That’s why I did research, try it for yourself.
I could reference every fact for you but I’m sure no one would care. If you do your own research you will discover the same information.
I work in a field of ionising radiation and have extensive safety training on such. Am I saying nuclear power is perfectly safe? That would be foolish, but realise energy from nuclear sources represents a far lower raditation risk to the public than the daily bombardment you receive from the sun. The environment around you, believe it or not, is emitting radiation. You eat food which comes from the earth, and guess what? it has traceable radiation levels. People working with ionising radiation sources will receive a higer dose than the public, but the levels are still extremely low.
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/
have a look!
Simon, how much more radiation is there in nuclear waste, versus background radiation?? You can’t compare the two and say there’s no difference. That’s what you seem to be implying…
Simon, OK, let’s do the, “I’m more qualified than you to discuss this issue” thing. I work in a field that investigates, maps and models contaminant behaviour in soil & groundwater, examines hydrogeolical conditions in contamination plumes etc, so I also know a thing or two about migration of contamination in the sub-strata. And although I know nothing about radiation in atsmoshperic conditions, I do know that the scenario that you were talking about would be inherently risky i.e. introducing enormous amounts of water to create a slurry of concentrated uranium for harvesting purposes scares me to death, simply because no amount of infrastructure would enable you to guarantee that this concentrated form of ‘contamination’ could be controlled. It would be environmentally devastating if a loss of containment occurred. The introduction of the vast quantities of water (which would come from where by the way?) to flush out these uranium seams would likely result in raising the level of the underlying groundwater to levels where it could encounter a more permeable strata capable of mobilising the contaminant great distances under ground, and potentially contaminating groundwater reserves for indefinable periods of time, thus making them useless for all peoposed uses.
Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a debate where we puff out our chests and prove how intelligent we all are, just trying to point out that the global warming debate is fraught with people on either side who can’t consider both sides of the argument in fact.
I agree with your last comment entirely.
However,
“I do know that the scenario that you were talking about would be inherently risky…..”
I’m afraid the bad news for you is they have been mining like this for years. It was develped in the ’70s
“In situ leaching (ISL), also known as solution mining, involves leaving the ore where it is in the ground, and using liquids which are pumped through it to recover the minerals out of the ore by leaching. Consequently there is little surface disturbance and no tailings or waste rock generated. However, the orebody needs to be permeable to the liquids used, and located so that they do not contaminate groundwater away from the orebody.”
http://www.uranium1.com/indexu.....amp;page=7
The good news for you is they are monitored by geologists and the EPA. They wouldn’t be doing it if it could be demonstrated it was a substantial risk to people or the environment.
Dan, the radiation leakage from nuclear waste is minimised by a number of processes which I already mentioned. It does not represent a risk to anyone unless they were to spend time in the immediate vicinity of the waste storage containers. Certainly it is much higher than normal environmental radiation, but it’s not stored anywhere near people or animals. Do you need to worry about being radiated by nuclear power plant waste? No. The only people who would need to be worried about it are the people trained to handle it safely. Do you think they would be doing their job if it was a high risk? Moderate risk even? Low risk perhaps?
Safety-wise I’d rather work in a nuclear power station than an oil refinery of coal-powered station.
http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD.....079095.pdf
Interesting read – and not pro-nuclear either.
“Sweden plans to get the vast majority of it’s power from nuclear and hydro. Sweden is leading nothing they have taken the EASY way out.”
As I pointed out earlier with renewables alone (Hydro+Others, NO NUCLEAR), they are still producing nearly 10 times the amount of green energy Australia produces. That is impressive.
“What should be focused on is finding cheaper sources of energy not just to reduce CO2 emissions”
Just looking for the cheaper options and ignoring Co2 emissions is whats got us in the sh*t in the first place, Australia already has a vast amount of renewables available. What its lacking is support and investment.
I’ll give you a point for at least posting a link to a reputable source, unfortunately page 2 of the article you posted discredits the Mars theory. Not to mention our climate is driven by Ocean activity not just solar radiation, so why anyone would compare our problems with Mars is beyond me.
“Id rather have some sort of explosion fueled by anything flammable under my bonnet because it sounds better than some lame whirring from an electric motor. ”
I too enjoy the rumble from my engine, I love driving manual and hate automatic cars. But at the same time, I like the idea of Max Torque from 0 rpm and giving OPEC the flick.
Well put Lazybones.
I remember an old episode of “Beyond 2000″ (Australia) which was always highlighting cool upcoming technologies before they hit the shelves. One was a car stereo enhancement that hooked up to the alternator and your car stereo (with other microphones and such) and broadcast whitenoise and fake engine sounds to effectively cancel out all exterior engine noise being created by your buzz-box and overlaying “the awesome” Ferrari (or insert other exotic car) engine noise inside the cabin.
Result? No matter what crappy car you owned, occupants only ever heard a supercar under your hood. Not only could you toggle between a raft of different engine notes, the revs were matched perfectly.
How did this idea not take off? And when will it be integrated into electric engined cars ;)
“http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD…..079095.pdf”
Bloodyhell, that is a serious read Simon. My head imploded after page 4. I might need some light comical reading now, like Wheels magazine :)
ya’s can argue till ur blue in the face, point is ur all right, it is a safer, cleaner power source, although we do need to find a way to properly dispose of the waste material, proper testing etc needs to be done before we can figure out how to dispose of it, who knows we might even end up finding a use for it