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Power Technology

Sweden To Be Oil-Free By 2020 258

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bold-statements-only-time-will-tell dept.
Philoneist.com writes "Treehugger is reporting that the 'Minister for Sustainable Development Mona Sahlin has declared that Sweden is going to become the first country in the world to break the dependence on fossil energy.'" Sweden's hope is to have all of the country's energy supplied by only renewable resources, ridding the country of cars that run on gasoline and oil-heated homes.
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Sweden To Be Oil-Free By 2020 More

Sweden To Be Oil-Free By 2020

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  • So.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@keir[ ]ad.org ['ste' in gap]> on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:14AM (#14556300)
    ... how tough is the immigration process?

    • Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grazzy ( 56382 ) <grazzy AT quake DOT swe DOT net> on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:18AM (#14556319) Homepage Journal
      Just write: "american" under nationality and "political pressure" under reason for applying.

      Welcome to sweden!
    • Sweden is a socialist country. EXTREMELY socialist even by pinko european standards. This means very simply that an awfull lot of your income will be taxed and given to people to lazy to work.

      Worse? Swedes are proud of this. It creates a country they like and best of all a society everyone can fit in. The hard workers can work hard and make more money then the terminally lazy BUT they will also be funding the terminally lazy. Oh and the sick and or handicapped or people who are raising the next generation

      • Sweden is a socialist country. EXTREMELY socialist even by pinko european standards. This means very simply that an awfull lot of your income will be taxed and given to people to lazy to work.

        And Sweden is the ONLY country in the world that has a higher standard of living than the US.

    • Re:So.... (Score:2, Funny)

      by tutori ( 821667 )
      I hear they also have a wonderful telephone system...

  • Beware, summary kinda misleading. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Colde ( 307840 ) * <slashdot@loked[ ]nt.info ['upo' in gap]> on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:17AM (#14556313) Homepage
    It will only be free of oil in 2020. Other renewable energy sources will first be fased out later. Which also makes more sense considering Swedens large dependancy of Nuclear Energy.

  • Why are they still building houses with oil heatin (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:18AM (#14556317)
    (Stupid subject length restriction)

    Why are they still building houses with oil heating?

    Similarly why build power stations that burn oil or gas?

    They seem horribly short sighted developments to me.

    Sweden should be applauded for trying to dump fossil fuels, but it will be a lot to ask for in only 14 years. However if it means the development of alternatives (where there's a market there's a will) then by the time the rest of the world starts realising they need to do it as well the technology should be a lot cheaper.

    Britain is looking at generating 20% of its power needs from tidal/wave power, however I think the more sensible nuclear power station route will be taken eventually.
    • > Why are they still building houses with oil heating?

      Are they? They use geothermical heating quite a lot.

      > Similarly why build power stations that burn oil or gas?

      Gas is not oil. I'd guess most of their power stations runs on coal anyway (actually water and nuclear power are probably the foundation). Does anyone still run (or even build) oil based power plants?

      > Sweden should be applauded for trying to dump fossil fuels,
      > but it will be a lot to ask for in only 14 years.

      They didn't say fossi
      • Gas is not oil. I'd guess most of their power stations runs on coal anyway (actually water and nuclear power are probably the foundation).

        Almost everything is nuclear and water. They make up more than 85% of total electricity output. The rest is a mixture of oil, gas, wind and others.

        Loads of information over at http://www.svenskenergi.se/ [svenskenergi.se] but unfortunately only in Swedish.

      • It's like 50 % nuclear, a lot of the remainder is hydro, a little wind, and quite a few combined power/heating plants with domestic waste as fuel. Actual powerplants on fossile fuel are rather rare -- some backup systems, mainly, and certainly some heating plants with fossile fuel.

        OTOH, we are currently net importing from, among others, Denmark. As far as I know, they rely quite heavily on coal, so a margin increase/decrease in consumption will relate more to coal usage.

    • Add to those the question, why are they still paving the strongest agricultural areas where materials for biodiesel grows in abundance? So I'm wondering why they're permanently destroying so much of that topsoil and paving the regions with the best farming weather. It's like there's a contest to see how fast they can pave it over.

      Canola thrives in the climate of southern Sweden and does poorly further north. Maybe we'll hear soon of a break through in making biodiesel from lichens, mosquitos and lar

    • I can say one thing for certain, as someone who just moved from a house heated by forced air natural gas to oil -- its a LOT cheaper to use oil. My heating costs have been cut in half because of how expensive natural gas is in the northeast.

      When it gets as cold as it does up here, you don't want your heat to rely on the gas company, regardless of cost, or the electric company, regardless of cost -- especially the latter. Electric isn't an option because the times you most need the heat are the times you're
    • seriously i would hate to live there. [anwr.org]

  • Iceland (Score:5, Informative)

    by jynus ( 790176 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:21AM (#14556334) Homepage
    Iceland said the same, but aimed for 2050 [detnews.com].

    • Re:Iceland (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MadTinfoilHatter ( 940931 )
      ...and unlike Sweden Iceland has huge resources of geothermal energy. Really, this is just some politicians trying to get attention, there really is no realistic way to meet this goal.

  • Wrong section... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:21AM (#14556338) Journal
    Shouldn't this be in 'Politics', not "Hardware'?
    • Sweden is a *BIG* piece of hardware :)
      right?
    • I think it is an excellent idea/mistake to put it under hardware. It looks like Sweden has found the political will to at least set a deadline. I know Sweden only by their reputation for precision and independece so I am assuming it is now a matter of national pride to be the first modern economy to shake off oil dependence.

      In other words, if the political argument has been won in Sweden, it really does boil down to a question of hardware.
    • MySQL error? Editor's error?

  • Not just Sweden (Score:5, Interesting)

    by little1973 ( 467075 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:22AM (#14556343)
    The whole world will be oil free by 2020, because oil will be too expensive to use as a fuel. Do not forget, the peak is near. [peakoil.com]

    • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:40AM (#14556414) Journal
      The whole world will be oil free by 2020, because oil will be too expensive to use as a fuel. Do not forget, the peak is near.

      Although we may not have passed peak production yet, if you take price-to-extract and new reserve discovery rates into consideration, we passed peak a few years ago.

      However! I too used to worry about peak oil, until I learned to stop worrying and love the methane hydrate ice.

      You've probably heard of it, but don't realize just how much the planet has... Seriously on the order of 20x the world's total oil reserves, in terms of energy capacity.

      On the down side, current estimates put the breakeven price of extraction at around $90 per-barrel-equivalent. So it won't let us keep driving cheap-fuel-sucking SUVs forever (Then again, I consider that a good thing*), but we don't need to worry about the global economy collapsing overnight due to literally running out of gas.



      * - I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil (though possibly not heating oil, but that gets into a regulatory nightmare considering that you can use diesel and #2 interchangeably, sulfur emmissions aside) to put it at over $10/gallon. Not only would the extra tax revenue allow reducing other taxes, but people would have a strong financial incentive to drive less, carpool more, and buy more efficient vehicles.

      • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:4, Interesting)

        by nativequeue ( 943365 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:47AM (#14556449) Homepage Journal
        > However! I too used to worry about peak oil, until I learned to stop worrying and love the methane hydrate ice.

        I like the methan hydrate where it is, deep down at ocean floors. We better not dig that up and disperse it in our environment.

        > I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil

        Most EU countries are already doing this. Thats why diesel fuel used for heating homes is colored, its not taxed the same way as diesel for automobiles is.

        • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:3, Insightful)

          by zenyu ( 248067 )

          I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil

          Most EU countries are already doing this. Thats why diesel fuel used for heating homes is colored, its not taxed the same way as diesel for automobiles is.

          This wouldn't work with a significant tax in the US. Too many Americans respect the law like Germans when someone is watching but make Italians' respect for the law appear German when no one is watching.

          What would work is a $10 per gallon phasin

          • I would love to have a new car that is much better with fuel and better for the environment. But the fact of the matter is, I can barely afford to pay for my used car and rent, bills, etc.

            Your refund is an intriguing idea, but don't most places charge you your heating costs monthly? And don't most places charge heat, water, electricity, and other utilities monthly? It would make month-to-month living much harder for the lower and middle classes, especially on their first year of being independent, since the
            • Having spent many years on both sides of the average wage I can sympathise with the rebate pain, ie: we take money you don't have and give it back to you next year. A rebate is fine only if you have a cash buffer that can handle it, the majority of people don't. I'd advise buying a cheap car that runs on LPG, it has saved me a fourtune over the last 10yrs. However I don't live in the US and oil has been heavily taxed in Australia for several decades (there is a rebate of some sort for fuel use in primary pr
        • I like the methan hydrate where it is, deep down at ocean floors. We better not dig that up and disperse it in our environment.

          Hear hear! It's bad enough that this might be pursued as yet another massive source of carbon, the methane hydrate itself is thought to hold the potential for catastrophic climate change: http://www.geotimes.org/nov04/feature_climate.html [geotimes.org]

          Leave it alone, we have enough problems.
        • The laws regarding diesel fuel are governed on a state-by-state basis here in the U.S, so not everything I say here may be true in every state. But in general, diesel fuel used on the road is taxed at a higher rate than any other usage of #2. And home heating oil is colored here, too.

          The vast majority of consumers of diesel are commercial trucks. I think they're subject to periodic and/or random inspections in every state, and one of the quick tests every inspector performs is a stick in the tank. If

      • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:15AM (#14556575) Homepage
        "I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil to put it at over $10/gallon.

        ...and then get voted out of office less than four years later in the biggest landslide since Atlantis. That's assuming that the riots don't topple the administration first.

        The biggest problem with the democratic system is that after a while the voters start to think that they should be running things.

        • ...and then get voted out of office less than four years later in the biggest landslide since Atlantis.

          Causing a depression tends to do that.

          You want to get rid of oil? Come up with a way to get rid of it without reducing economic output of quality of life at all. Better yet, come up with a way that improves both... Until then, think of how many old people and poor people your $8/gallon tax on fuel oil would kill, and how much your food would cost when the trucking costs quadrupled. Energy taxes are a tax o
      • You forget that heavily taxing the fuel is hard for the economic growth of a country too. The whole transport sector will suffer and prices of all goods will increase. This is a tricky balance; fuel taxes cannot be taxed indiscriminately.
        • A baby cries when you take away it's dummy but soon gets over it.

          I am old enough to remember the last oil crisis. Here in Australia they did the same as the EU countries and put hefty taxes on oil, pepole griped and carried on about it but by the time the election comes around people have other things on their mind. The economy takes a one time hit and keeps on going. The timing and power situation is ripe for GWB to whack a tax on now. Unfortunately that would require leadership and foresight and as you
          • Oil taxes are not needed. Natural supply pressures will push the cost of oil up over $70/barrel soon. As supply pressure grows, price goes up and people will begin to conserve on their own.

            I don't mind the tax idea, except, I can assure you the government would funnel it to something stupid. Like a recent $24M funneled to finding out how to genetically engineer pork to taste better. [Not joking]
      • 've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil (though possibly not heating oil, but that gets into a regulatory nightmare considering that you can use diesel and #2 interchangeably, sulfur emmissions aside) to put it at over $10/gallon.

        You can't do this for the same reason that you can't tax heating oil. This is a regressive tax on an essential good that will mostly hurt the people for whom this expentiture is a larger portion of their budget

        • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:2, Insightful)

          by superwiz ( 655733 )
          It's a myth that "poor people need cars". The rich are not rich because they have a big number written somewhere indicating their wealth. They are rich because they can use that number to make poor people work for them. That being said, if poor people could not work anymore, the rich people would not be rich anymore. So the public transportation would right away become in everyone's interest. The people who are against public transportation are the car manufacturers and their cronies. The public trans

      • You've probably heard of it, but don't realize just how much the planet has... Seriously on the order of 20x the world's total oil reserves, in terms of energy capacity.

        Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Let's just not learn any fucking lessons at all and switch right over to the next non-renewable, environment-poluting, war-inspiring resource...

        • Let's just not learn any fucking lessons at all and switch right over to the next non-renewable, environment-poluting, war-inspiring resource...

          Whoah there! Go read some of my other posts on this subject... You won't find many bigger proponents of renewable energy sources than me. But people panicing at the thought of running out of oil doesn't do any good, either, when most people really can't make a difference, in the bigger picture (though adopting the available conservation measures already availab

    • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:50AM (#14556457) Homepage Journal
      Whether Peak Oil will happen in 2020 (or sooner/or later) does not mean Oil will disappear overnight. What will happen is what happened in the 1970s: an "Oil Shock".

      An Oil Shock, in turn, means there will be tremendous economic problems to be solved, but it does not mean the End of the World. I suspect a lot of people will adapt to the new circumstances. They won't like it, but they will adapt, because this is what humans do best.

      In the worst possible case, I think governments will strongly intervene -- they will have to -- to guarantee (and subsidize) oil supplies to the most crucial consumers (food producers, electricity producers, emergency responders, armed forces) while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

      That really sucks if you live in a country with poor mass transportation like, uh... 90% of the United States. It's going to be mostly OK in many European countries, where mass transportation (including high-speed trains) is already a fact of life and renewable energies are being increasingly adopted. I am not saying it will be a walk in the park, because it won't be, but most wealthy countries consume too much energy and waste so much of it.

      Other things that will be very dodgy will be the survival of airlines and of most cargo ships. But, even there, there are solutions: blimps, for instance, are much more efficient than airplanes energy-wise, and can cross the Atlantic in a couple of days at most. Clipper ships, that are powered by wind, the ultimate renewable energy, can be brought back from the dead and maintain vital commercial links between continents. I also strongly suspect that nuclear-powered giant cargoes will be used in the near future, if Peak Oil becomes a reality.

      Sure, these are slow methods of transcontinental transportation, but it's better than no transportation at all.

      And, of course, it is a lot more efficient to organize teleconferences and email links than it is to send people from one end of the world to the other anyway.

      Finally, don't forget that an Oil Shock will make all other sources of energy economically viable. Wind, Solar, Sea Tides, Geothermal, etc. will all become competitive once the price of Oil goes through the roof. And that's a good thing as far as I am concerned, since Oil consumption is also one of the major reasons Global Warming is taking place...

      For more information on this, I do recommend the many documents published by the Rocky Mountain Institute [rmi.org], including "Winning the Oil End Game". Recommended readings before you start to panic.

      • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TallMatthew ( 919136 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:26AM (#14556641)
        That really sucks if you live in a country with poor mass transportation like, uh... 90% of the United States. It's going to be mostly OK in many European countries, where mass transportation (including high-speed trains) is already a fact of life and renewable energies are being increasingly adopted. I am not saying it will be a walk in the park, because it won't be, but most wealthy countries consume too much energy and waste so much of it.

        There's a good reason the US doesn't have the mass transporation of European countries.

        The United States is bigger than all of them put together.

        Mass transportation will never be efficient except in the most densely-populated urban areas, where people live and commute within a small radius of one another. That's just not going to happen in rural communities. Too, public transportation doesn't work in cities that are laid out over a large area, e.g. Los Angeles.

        Driving isn't just a part of the American lifestyle, for many people it's part of who they are. We identify ourselves with our cars; rightly or wrongly, they are part of our psychological makeup. Anyone that wants to govern in this country knows that they must provide the citizenry with automobiles and fuel. They just have to. I don't know what's going to happen when the reserves are depleted. I mean, it's entire plausible we'd send our troops to war on account of oil.

        Oh, wait.

        • There's a good reason the US doesn't have the mass transporation of European countries.

          The United States is bigger than all of them put together.

           According to the CIA World Factbook the USA is 9,631,418 sq km. According to Wikipedia Europe is 10,030,000 sq km.
          • If you count Europe, including all the territory from the Atlantic to the Urals, then yes it is 10,030,000 km^2. But that includes all of European Russia. If you look at just the European Union, for example, the size is 3,976,372 km^2. When people refer to "European countries" they usually don't include half of Russia in their measurements. Thus, grandparent is probably still correct.

        • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Shadow99_1 ( 86250 )
          Um I'll argue at least one point (& ignore whether the US is larger than the whole of Europe):

          Sprawl (ie Los Angeles)
          Looking at it objectively LA could have eficient mass transportation. Tokyo is very similiar in alot of ways to the layout of LA, yet Tokyo has (arguably) one of the most efficient mass transport systems in the world. Even the distance to other large cities is very similiar.

          The problem is how late the system is compared to development of the areas. Tokyo has gorwn around a mass transit sy

          • Re:Not just Sweden (Score:3, Informative)

            by dimension6 ( 558538 )
            I hate to be nitpicky, but while Japanese are more keen on building big public infrastructures, the population of Tokyo is far denser than LA (also, the Tokyo pop. is over 12,000,000, while L.A. has less than 4,000,000 people). Tokyo is definitely both vertically and horizontally, while L.A. is basically horizontal (Japanese land is scarce, aside from northern Hokkaido perhaps).
      • while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

        No thanks, I'll just buy an electric car and have it charge off the power grid via hydro/wind/nuclear/geo-thermal/waves, whatever. There's no way in hell you'll get Americans to use mass transportation outside of a handful of major densely populated cities.

      • In the worst possible case, I think governments will strongly intervene -- they will have to -- to guarantee (and subsidize) oil supplies to the most crucial consumers (food producers, electricity producers, emergency responders, armed forces) while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

        In the worst possible case, the closest thing to government will be the roving bands of marauders looking for you and for me because they

      • It's not going to be as bad as you think. The Free Market is an amazing thing. Gasoline prices are on the rise, and eventually, OilPeek or not, we are going to see $3/gal again. At $3/gal the economics of fuel start to change.

        A car that gets 28 mpg on $3/gal gas costs 10.7 cents per mile, or $1286 per year in fuel (assuming 12k miles).

        An electric car that gets 6 m/KWh on $0.10/KWh costs 1.7 cents per mile, or $200 per year in fuel costs. The $1086 saved per year would be $3,000-$5,000 over the life of the b
      • One thing to keep in mind is that we are not only peaking on price point for petroleum extraction and production, but demand is increasing exponentially. China is coming online as a major industrial nation now.

        The changes should be gradual and better for the environment. Fuel prices will rise pretty consistently over the next 10 years, and as the production cost for fossil fuel derivatives increases, other options will become more viable and niche alternative fuel markets will emerge and begin to grow.

  • Isn't Iceland in the lead? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j-beda ( 85386 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:22AM (#14556344) Homepage
    I thought Iceland [www.cbc.ca] was going to "be the first"?

    • They plan to phase oil out by 2050.

      Strangely enough, they're much more advanced on the way since transports (cars, buses and planes) are more or less the only things still hooked on oil in Iceland.

      • I think most homes outside of Reykjavik are heated with oil.

        Within the city there is steam generated by geothermal plants for heating offered as a public utility, like water or gas, but this isn't an option when you get further out; steam being a rather difficult thing to transmit over long distances. That said, the geothermal systems for Reykjavik are really impressive, and when I travelled there a few years ago, everyone seemed quite happy/proud of it (at least to an outsider). However I don't think they'

  • Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SleepyHappyDoc ( 813919 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:24AM (#14556351)
    So, in 14 years, every car currently on the road in Sweden will be obsolete? Illegal? Will they be making outlaws of classic car collectors? The Swedish automobile industry must be much larger and more advanced than I had ever dreamed, to pull this off. They're going to have to develop affordable new cars with a completely different architecture, since used cars won't be usable. Is the government going to reimburse people whose vehicles are unusable and unsellable? And can every single driver in the country afford a brand new car? A brand new domestically made car, even?

    Somehow I don't think they thought this through.

    • Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Silver Sloth ( 770927 )

      The Swedish automobile industry must be much larger and more advanced than I had ever dreamed, to pull this off.

      Well Saab and Volvo aren't exactly minnows. Saab in particular has a long standing reputation for original thingking - remember the three cylinder two stroke?. Volvo are one of the biggest truck manufacturers in Europe.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)

      by k-sound ( 718684 )
      Ridiculous indeed, imagine a Swedish car manufacturer making a car that doesn't use fossil fuel.
      That could never happen ! [autoblog.com]
      • Ok, so they've developed a concept vehicle. Unless there's a pre-existing (as in right now) infrastructure for biofuel fill-up stations (maybe there is, I'm not Swedish), one will have to be implemented before the car will be drivable. This will take time and money. Also, the car will have to go from concept to production, taking a certain length of time and money. Also, other concepts will have to be invented to fill other automotive needs (have you seen any concept biofuelled transport trucks?). The

    • Re:Ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Somehow I don't think they thought this through.

      Ha ha ha ha ha ha .....

      [crumbles to ground in tears laughing]

      So let me get this straight: YOU rant incoherently, clearly not having reading the article or studied the issue for more than 30 seconds, but THEY haven't thought it through?

      Grow up, man. Quit being one of the idiots polluting forums with reactionary drivel and try contributing intelligent commentary. Hint: it should take you more than 30 seconds to form your opinion.

      God DAMN it these f

      • So let me get this straight: YOU rant incoherently, clearly not having reading the article or studied the issue for more than 30 seconds, but THEY haven't thought it through?

        You have a point, it is a well considered issue. But you also have it a bit wrong.

        The main motivation is probably that 2006 is an election year in Sweden.

        So that was a very well considered press release... The idea is to defuse a question or to attract some voter group. Lots of expensive, mostly spin, consultants has probably

    • Already today there are some cars running on either fossile gas, biogas or electricity, and they should still be usable.

      The bioethanol ones won't, however. They use 15% petrol.

      And the majority of the cars sold are still petrol ones...

      Actually, I'm in the political party in Sweden who wants to ban sale of new petrol cars (except flexifuel bioethanol ones) somewhere between 2010-2015. And I still don't think it is at all possible to abolish petrol usage until 2020 even with that schedule. Actually I drive a 2
    • And can every single driver in the country afford a brand new car?

      Yes.

      But its the insurance rates that kill them. ;)
    • Certainly it's a laudable goal, but the cynic in me tells me that Sahlin, the politician, is just trying to score some greenie points. By 2020 she will be retired anyway, so it's not like she has anything at stake on this project actually amounting to anything.

      Just like Sweden "decided" to phase out nuclear power in 1980 (hint: they still produce about 45 % of electricity by nuclear). ;-)

  • Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cee ( 22717 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:35AM (#14556394)
    To quote my grandmother, don't believe everything you read in newspapers. And to that I would like to add: don't believe everything you hear from politicians. Of course, I agree that we can't continue our dependency on oil and it's nice when people have visions. But will it happen by 2020? Sadly, I don't think so. (Bias: I'm a Swede.)

  • The Swedes can do it if anyone can (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:41AM (#14556424)
    Heck, they already managed to change from driving on the left to driving on the right [wikipedia.org]--that's more than most countries could pull off!

  • Good first step... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:44AM (#14556435)

    ...but it's easy for a country covered in trees with a population of 27 people to eliminate it's dependency on fossil fuels - you just burn trees instead (or use a couple of wind turbines). The situation is quite a bit different in more densily populated countries like the UK (383 people / sq Km, Sweeded is 20 people / sq Km) or places like the US where the bulk of the population is very much concentrated in one or two general areas. In the case of the UK I doubt we have the land mass to derive all our power from renewable sources _and_ produce enough food to feed ourselves. In the case of the US I'm sure they have the space but it's a long way from where the power is needed and therefore transmission losses are going to be huge.

    Sorry to any Swedish reading this I know you have more than 27 people but you have got to admit you have a lot of space per person.

    • places like the US where the bulk of the population is very much concentrated in one or two general areas

      Erm, while I agree with your general point, I gotta call you on that claim. Unless you count 30-something Eastern States (like the entire country east of Oklahoma) as a "general area," which is a bit absurd.

      The U.S. is categorically not a densely populated country, nor is the population heavily concentrated, outside of a few major cities. The majority of the consumer purchasing power in the United States

      • Perhaps my view of the US is a little wrong. The impression I got was that 60 to 70% of the population lived on the east or west coast, primarily in the large towns and cities, with huge tracts of land in the middle that were practically devoid of people. While on average the country isn't densily populated you have to admit it has areas where the density is very high and areas where it is very low. That is in contrast to the UK where there is a more even spread of people.

        Anyway, I always wondered why the

  • Fossil Energy independane? Only half the work (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:49AM (#14556454) Homepage Journal
    Get free of all the other items made using fossil fuels as well. Otherwise what are you really doing? There are many items made with fossil fuels that could be made with alternatives, provided someone would want to pay for it.

    This whole idea sounds more like a "feel good" program. All those "tax benefits" to encourage the switch look good but are only to bait the hook but as with any tax used to change behaviour it will not generate the income necessary long term and new sources will be needed. Look at the "congestion tax" - do they expect vehicle use to drop so much as the original reason behind the tax is no longer applicable?

    Oh well, best of luck. I think the time table is ludicrous but if they can pull it off then maybe the rest of the world can learn. If not at least one country will be slightly better off.

  • Riiight. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aagctu1952 ( 768423 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:56AM (#14556480)
    These are the same people who are shutting down perfectly good and safe nuclear reactors in favor of importing electric power from dirty Danish and Polish coal plants and (oh the irony) old Soviet graphite reactors in the Baltics. Oh, and did I mention that this has led to the country not having enough power to support peak demand during winter (politicians seem to be unable to grasp the difference between electric power and energy)? The only good thing in the whole mess is that their previous pipe dream goal ("nuclear free Sweden by 2010") has no chance of being met...

    They are also the same people who have set the goal of "0 traffic deaths" - and honestly believe that they'll reach it.

    There's truly nothing to see here. Move along.
    • These are the same people who are shutting down perfectly good and safe nuclear reactors in favor of importing electric power from dirty Danish and Polish coal plants and (oh the irony) old Soviet graphite reactors in the Baltics.

      Well, they could hardly dump all their nuclear waste and France's, could they?

    • Re:Riiight. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The goal of 0 deaths in traffic ("nollvisionen") is not really as stupid as you make it look. The actual goal is just that 0 people are going to die in traffic as a result of poor road construction, poor driving education, poor maintenance of the road (such as leaving them icy and snowy), etc. This figure does not include peple who crash due to driving drunk or due to recklessness, it is strictly related to things that the government is responsible for.

      As for the 2010 abolition of nuclear power. There was a

    • Re:Riiight. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by wikkiewikkie ( 596205 )
      Their goal of reducing traffic deaths has lead to tremendous innovation in the field of automotive safety. Safety glass, the three-point seatbelt, and side-impact airbags were all invented by Swedes. In addition, safety features are routinely standardized across all of their models decades before US automakers even introduce them.

      Given that much of their success in the automotive safety field is driven by the zero traffic-death goal, why wouldn't a similar goal for energy usage spurn innovation in that fi
  • While I do applaud initiatives to limit oil use, both for environmental and economical reasons, this timetable is just too optimistic. Attempts to do this politically is really not feasible, though it might happen anyway (and on a global level) if the predictions about peak oil is true.

    Few analysts in Sweden believed that this was anything else than political hot air when this was announced a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you want to get the announcement from the source, it is here [sweden.gov.se]. The minister's own ho

  • original article (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=572&a=468 440&previousRenderType=6 [www.dn.se]Original article in Swedish, from the swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
    http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3212/a/51058 [sweden.gov.se]Original article translated, on Goverment offices of Swedens official site.

    Now take it with a grain of salt. The article was written for the political debate section of a newspaper, during an election year.
  • I think the statement to get rid of the dependency of fossil energy doesn't mean the total lack of any oil in the car industry. The process of converting plants like colza (rape) to oil and using it as bio-diesel is already in use. Given the fact that volvo has a lot of experience producing diesel engines for trucks this could be a very good replacement for all cars. It is already in heavy use here in Europe, a lot of cargo companies switched their trucks to bio-diesel because it is a lot cheaper and you ju
    • I think what will happen is that as the technology to grow oil-bearing algae matures, we will get our oil-based products from the processing of these algae (e.g., diesel fuel, heating oil, kerosene, and possibly gasoline, with the "waster product" processed further into animal feed and ethanol fuel). Several companies are seriously looking at this process and the switchover to algae-based oil products could start happening by early the next decade.

  • Volvo and Saab (Score:2, Interesting)

    by johndeerejedi ( 317878 )
    Ok, so I guess Volvo and Saab will be the first car manufacturers to go completely fossil free too then, huh?

  • So will everyone else (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Fun Guy ( 21791 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:14AM (#14557041) Homepage Journal
    ... which is why the Swedes, the Germans, the Chinese, the Americans and everyone else have to get over their reluctance to embrace nuclear power. As oil gets more scarce, it will get more expensive. After our fourth or fifth hideously expensive war to secure, yet again, access to "our" oil, the politicians will finally run a cost-benefit analysis. The oil will be so expensive that it's just better to let Venezuela, Saudi Arabia or some other OPEC country go to hell and redirect our time and effort into energy independence. Not short-term BS like ANWR or LNG, but the only viable long-term energy option, nuclear fission.

    "But what about all the waste?", cry the environmentalists, "don't despoil Yucca Mountain with those mountains of radioactive waste!" Sooner or later, somebody is going to wake up to the fact that breeder reactors that use fuel recycing produce less than 3% of that high level waste that would go into Yucca. When the volumes are that low, you can just glassify it, sink the glass pieces in an ingot of lead and encase the ingots in 5-ton concrete casks and put them in neat rows in a parking lot somewhere. Put up a razor wire fence and that's that. No chance of anyone stealing it for dirty bombs because the casks are so damned heavy ("physical security"), even if the concrete cracks in 30 years the glass won't go anywhere, and the local town will welcome the jobs for Buford and Billy Joe to walk around the fence thirty times a night at $17.50/hr.

    Don't want a permanent radioactive waste dump on the outskirts of your town? Call it a "Temporary Cask Transit Facility" and shuffle the casks around every now and again to make it look like they aren't there permanently. "Renew the lease" on the land every 10 years to give you an opportunity to re-bribe the new set of elected officials in town, and make sure you paint the casks every year as part of "safety inspections" to keep them looking neat and safe... that will give jobs to Jim Bob and Cyrus, too.

    In the end, you can spend $10,000,000 a year on each of 100 different "Temporary Cask Transit Facilities" for 100 years and still end up cheaper than Yucca Mountain, while offering 1000x the storage capacity.

  • Election Year (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zo0ok ( 209803 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:31AM (#14557182) Homepage
    Ok Guys. There are elections in Sweden this autumn. The government have no idea how to get rid of oil. NO IDEA. The following three decisions are made:

      1. Dont invest in more hydro plants
      2. Get rid of nuclear power
      3. Dont increase CO2-emissions

    On top of this the government now says that Sweden will be independent of oil in 2020. They say so because there are elections this year, and the government is afraid of the communist party and the green party!

  • Official Announcement Link (Score:3, Informative)

    by jamesl ( 106902 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @10:31AM (#14557826)
    Since treehugger.com was too greedy to publish the link, here is the original announcement http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3212/a/51058 [sweden.gov.se] from Mona Sahlin, Minister for Sustainable Development.

  • Zing (Score:3, Funny)

    by umbrellasd ( 876984 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @11:00AM (#14558184)
    I, for one, welcome our tall blonde petroleum free overladies! (There's always water-based.)

  • Oil FREE? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @12:27PM (#14559359)
    So they're going to stop using plastics, and tires? No more asphalt on their roads? What is their entire merchant shipping and fishing fleet going to run on? Will KLM be flying solar powered airliners?

    I think it is quite an exxageration to say that they will be free of fossil fuels by 2020. Perhaps by 2120.

    TFA only mentions cars and homes, but I don't see hundreds of thousands of homes retrofitted to some other heating system within 14 years.

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