Stockholm, Swede In the light of the disturbing climate change phenomenon, the government of Sweden has begun implementing measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and slow down the climate reversal process.
The authorities, a couple of months ago, set a new policy target aimed at creating conditions for creating conditions that would halt the country’s dependence on fossil fuels by 2020.
Making this disclosure on Friday in Stockholm, the Swedish Minister for Sustainable Development, Mrs. Mona Sahun, pointed out that a broad-based expert council known as “The Commission on Oil Independence,” was appointed last December, and in May, reviewed the actions necessary to achieve the new policy target.
A former Minister for Democracy and Integration and a Member of Parliament since 1982, Sahun told participants at the ongoing 2006 Congress of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists that, despite getting a considerable amount of its energy needs from nuclear power, Sweden planned to phase out nuclear energy.
The IFEJ 2006 began on Wednesday and will end on Monday (today). The theme of congress is: “Urban life in a globalising world.”
“Nuclear energy is not a sustainable energy source,” she stated, adding that this led to the decision of the Swedish Parliament to do away with the nation’s numerous nuclear reactors “in a responsible and controlled manner.”
According to her, two reactors in a town called Barseback were shut in 1999 and 2005, and that the next step would be to assess the oldest reactors, apparently to eliminate them in phases and not in any way to disrupt the level and flow of demand of power.
Indeed, about half of the country’s electricity production comes from hydropower, even as the use of oil has fallen from more than 70 per cent of the total energy supply in 1970 to about 30 per cent in 2006.
Sahun attributed this to diversification of fuels and more efficient use of energy, stressing that biomass and wind energy largely account for a considerable increase in renewable energy sources vis-à-vis the total supply within the past 12 years.
In a related development, the authorities have set a fresh mandate to ensure that, by 2007, all buses operating within Stockholm run by “clean fuel.”
Currently, 108 ethanol buses and 30 biogas-powered ones are in operation. The concept began 16 years ago.
The buses are basically of the diesel engine type but now converted to run either on ethanol or biogas. Though a limited number of ethanol is made locally from wood pulp (and sugar cane), majority of Stockholm’s consumption is imported from Brazil.
Produced locally from human and animal waste, biogas is however available on a limited quantity compared with ethanol, disclosed the Environmental Manager, the Stockholm Public Transport (or SL), Maria Ljung, who added that pollution of the environment by carbon and nitrogen oxides (resulting from use of diesel fuel) as well as financial and supply insecurity of petroleum products informed the need to seek alternative and environment friendly sources of fuel.
She noted that awareness had begun to spread to private vehicle owners and that, last year, 17 per cent of cars bought in the country were hybrid vehicles that utilise alternative fuel.
Ljung stated, “A directive has been made that petrol filling stations will now be equipped with outlets for ethanol and biogas fuel because of the increase in demand for such.”
Considers one of the highest users of public buses in Europe, Stockholm, stressed the environmentalist, would soon be joined by cities such as Madrid (Spain), La Spezia (Italy), Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and Nanyang (China) in the league of users of ethanol buses, courtesy of a project tagged: BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport (or BEST).
The BEST, it was gathered, is supported by the European Union and coordinated by the City of Stockholm.
