Produce more, pollute less – the Nordic vision
The Nordic countries have a very fine track record when it comes to dealing with the really big challenge in a carbon-constrained future: creating more growth with less pollution.
WINDMILLS. A small proportion of the Danish windmills are placed at sea, but as these mills are generally larger that the land-based mills they represent almost 15 % of the installed capacity.
In the middle of Kattegat, the small strait at the entrance to the Baltic Sea, lies the island of Samsø. The island is a part of Denmark and, apart from being a very lovely spot for summer holidays, golfers and home of the best spring potatoes in Denmark, it is also the most visionary example of a new trend that is blossoming in Denmark and indeed across the Nordic countries. Samsø is the first municipality in Denmark to become powered 100 % by renewable energy.
Windmills both on land and at sea combined with bioenergy fuelled mostly by straw from the farms on the island and solar energy create more energy than is consumed on the island.
Samsø is perhaps a special case. Being a relative small community of 4,300 people with plenty of biomass for heating and power, it is relatively easier for the ”samsings” - the local name for the island’s inhabitants - to make the transition to a cleaner technology. But the island has become a beacon for many other Nordic communities now in a veritable race to become CO2-neutral or free of fossil fuels, or in other ways to take on the challenge of converting cities and communities to a future where energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will have to be drastically reduced. In Sweden, the town of Växjö has announced plans to become totally free of fossil fuels, but it is struggling for national green leadership with the city of Malmö, which has already declared itself CO2-neutral. And just across the border formed by the Öresund, the Danish capital Copenhagen aims to become the world’s first CO2-neutral capital by no later than 2025. Indeed the entire country of Norway has announced an ambition to become CO2-neutral by 2030.
Growth without pollution
However,
the ambition to be on the front line of the battle against climate change does
not mean that the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and
Iceland are less committed to sustained economic growth than other countries.
When the world’s population is set to grow to approximately 9 billion people by
2050, economic growth is not an option, it is absolutely necessary. And the
Nordic countries have a very fine track record when it comes to dealing with
the really big challenge in a carbon-constrained future: creating more growth
with less pollution.
The Nordic countries are among the most energy-efficient developed countries today. Indeed Sweden and Norway take first and third place among the OECD countries when it comes to producing wealth with as little emission of greenhouse gases as possible. And developments in the recent past show that these positions do not come from slowed-down economies.
From 1991 to 2006 Denmark and Sweden cut their emissions of CO2 per 1,000 dollars of GDP by 37 percent. Indeed during those years all the Nordic countries reduced their CO2 emissions considerably while maintaining a healthy growth rate, which consistently kept them in the group of richest countries in the world.
The ambitions for the future are equally strong. Sweden has adopted an ambitious plan for renewable energy to deliver 50 percent of the country's energy demands by 2020. Norway aims to be CO2-neutral by 2030, with a majority of the necessary emission cuts coming from domestic initiatives, while the rest will come from projects abroad, mainly large anti-deforestation projects. Iceland - facing the challenge of cutting emissions that come almost entirely from cars and fishing fleets - wants to cut domestic emissions by 75 % by 2050. Denmark, the world leader in wind energy, will not set a target before 2010 when the commission doing the groundwork for the future energy policy will deliver their work, but hopes are high as the commission has been asked for an ambitious plan on how Denmark can become 100 percent free of fossil fuels. Finland will follow the plan set up by the European Union for emission cuts in the member countries. By 2020 it is due to increase its share of renewable energy to approximately 40 % and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 16 % compared to 2005.
Different resources
These ambitions are not easily achieved, especially when one considers the location of the Nordic countries at latitudes where house heating is crucial almost everywhere nearly all the year round, and where distances often are great. And though the Nordic countries are geographically close, there are huge differences in both natural energy resources and demand for energy among them. Sweden and Finland share large biomass resources from foresting, and Sweden and in particular Norway are also rich in hydro energy. But where Norway has huge oil and gas resources in their part of the North Sea and North Atlantic, Sweden and Finland have no oil production at all. Both countries get a substantial amount of their electricity from nuclear energy.
Iceland is devoid of trees and has no oil or gas. Hydro energy is substantial, but the overwhelming and unique source of energy in Iceland is geothermal, as the country is located in a very active volcanic zone.
Denmark is probably the country with the most meagre natural renewable energy resources. Substantial oil and gas deposits in the North Sea have made the country a net exporter of oil and gas, but the resources are still far from the size of Norway's, and production is set to decline. Denmark has on the other hand made good use of wind power, biomass from the large agricultural sector and incineration of waste.
Infrastructure provides security
As the electricity grids of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland are connected - and further connected with grids in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Estonia - there is a considerable exchange and trade in electricity that connects the energy supplies of the four countries. This increases the reliability of each country’s grid and also makes the energy supply scenarios interwoven. A very rainy year for example will create more hydro energy resources in Norway and Sweden, which will affect the electricity price and generation in all countries, as electricity system operators will buy cheap hydro energy instead of more expensive coal or oil-based electricity. In dry years the trade goes the other way. On windy days, windmills in Denmark produce more than 100 percent of the electricity needed at home. The energy is auctioned off in the electricity market. Plans for further grid connections to facilitate more energy trade and for the introduction of a more diverse range of - often renewable - energy sources have been made.
On the demand side there are also appreciable differences among the Nordic countries. Sweden, Norway and Finland use considerably more energy per capita than Denmark. This is partly because of the higher energy needs of industry and transportation, but the harsher climate also plays a role.
How to do it
The Nordic countries are following different strategies to produce more while polluting less according to the difference in conditions affecting the energy scenarios in each country. But there are common strategies and tools being used across the region.
First of all, the focus on energy conservation and savings. Since the early 1990s Finland has had a policy of voluntary Energy Efficiency Agreements promoted by different sectors of society, where the government subsidizes energy audits and analysis to show the potential for increased energy efficiency. By the end of 2006 these agreements had saved approximately 7.7 TWh of energy, comparable to the total energy use in 380,000 single family houses.
Similar schemes have been used in Denmark - which as early as 1990 adopted the world’s first energy policy where saving energy was the main focus - combined in the latter years with agreements on mandatory energy savings in different parts of the energy sector. Sweden has also adopted programmes (including tax incentives) to make industry more energy-efficient.
Looking at technology, Finland and in particular Denmark have made very broad use of combined heating and power generation, reaching very high efficiency rates in their plants. Using combined heat and power generation with the newest generation of condensating boilers will in some cases - for example at the new biomass plant at Fynsværket in Denmark, which opens next year - take the efficiency of the plant close to 100 percent. The use of straw, wood chip or waste makes these plants not only very efficient but also reduces their net greenhouse gas emissions significantly.
Denmark has been the world leader in windmill technology since the 1980s, and not surprisingly a large portion of the electricity generated in Denmark uses this technology. The more than 5,000 windmills in Denmark produce around 20 % of the electricity generated in the country, and on windy days the share exceeds 100 percent, with the surplus being exported to the neighbouring countries.
A small proportion of the Danish windmills are placed at sea, but as these mills are generally larger that the land-based mills they represent almost 15 % of the installed capacity. This reflects the widely regarded opinion that the future of wind energy is at sea, with large offshore windmill farms rivalling even nuclear power plants for capacity. At present plans for building an international windmill farm with a combined installed effect of up to 1,800 MW are being developed in a cooperation between Danish and Swedish energy companies.
More wind power and more research
Wind power is generally considered to become a much larger part of the power generation in the Nordic countries. Sweden is expected to step up efforts to install wind power capacity considerably in the coming years to reach the ambitious goal of 50 % renewable energy by 2020. And in Norway plans for using the offshore expertise generated by the oil industry to create a new energy adventure - this time in renewable offshore wind power - are taking shape.
Several of the Nordic governments are putting considerable funding into energy research, not only into new energy sources such as wind and solar power but also into a very broad palette of research areas. This reflects the realization that if new energy technologies and more climate-friendly practices are to be widely used, the dissemination of ideas and technology needs a push. One example of this is the very recent Swedish programme funding research into how knowledge from the Swedish Energy Agency can best be used by the municipalities in the country.
In Norway research into carbon capture and storage is getting a lot of attention. The underground area in the Norwegian part of the North Sea that is home to the country's large oil and gas fields has the capacity to store the accumulated CO2 emissions from all of western Europe for several hundred years if the technology to compress, transport and store CO2 becomes financially and technically viable. Also of importance is the strong focus on developing second generation biofuels in Sweden and Denmark, which perhaps will allow biofuels to become a viable replacement for fossil fuels in transport.
A strong position in a carbon-free future
Overall the Nordic countries have had a considerable growth in GDP since 1990 and at the same time have managed to reduce or only marginally increase the emission of greenhouse gases. This has made the Nordic countries some of the most efficient developed countries when it comes to creating more wealth while polluting less. It is clear that some Nordic countries have had natural advantages such as abundant resources of hydropower or biofuel, but in the last couple of decades these advantages have been combined with a strong focus on saving energy and developing and implementing cleaner and more efficient technologies.
Today the Nordic countries are set to be one of the most interesting regions in the world when it comes to solving the energy problems of the future. An ability to combine strengths in renewable energy sources like wind power and second generation biofuels with expertise in offshore energy installations, connected smart power grid technology and a strong dose of common sense (saving where possible and combining heat and power generating) has given the Nordic countries a strong base to prepare for a future where the dependency on fossil fuels and the threat to the climate can be handled.
Links
- Danish Energy Agency
- Swedish Energy Agency
- Ministry of Employment and the Economy, Finland
- Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate
- Icelandic
National Energy Authority
- Motiva, Information Centre for Energy Efficiency, Finland
- Feasibility study of Danish/Swedish/German windmill farm at Kriegers Flak
- Interactive map of windmills in Denmark
From 1990 to 2006 the Nordic countries all experienced economic growth ranging from a little less than 40 % (Denmark, Finland and Sweden) to around 60 % (Norway and Iceland). But in the same period greenhouse gas emissions fell** in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and only rose marginally in Iceland. As the graph shows, this means that all the Nordic countries have achieved the goal of decoupling economic growth from pollution.
Today the Nordic countries are among the countries most efficiently generating wealth while minimizing the stress this puts on the climate. The graph to the left shows how they are positioned internationally.
* source: UNFCCC: National greenhouse gas inventory data for the period 1990–2006
** (excluding land use, land-use change and forestry).
Notes for both graphs: For Denmark, the data cover the mainland of Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland, except for GDP data, which are not available for Faroe Islands and Greenland.
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