Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

[monkeytrousers]

Sounds like a good plan, lets hope it catches on!

[hub2dee]

... and not a mention of possible political motives anywhere in the article, LOL.

The UK renewable enrgey situation didn't sound so clever though !

[suzywong]

Bloody hell, does that mean they'll be recalling my Volvo?????

[Heathcliffscathy]

hub, talk me through them (the politcal motives...)

[hub2dee]

I'm referring to a perceived dependency on oil from the Middle East (and the political implications thereof). Obviously, different countries will source different percentages of their total oil requirement from different places, and I imagine Sweden would pull most from the North Sea, but it nonetheless presents a model of how different countries may organise their energy economy IYSWIM.

[monkeytrousers]

Hasn't there always been an issue between Norway and Sweden due to the fact Norway has oil and Sweden doesn't? Whatever the politics it's a good thing to start weaning ourselves off it. Barely 200 years since the industrial revolution and it's nearly all gone. Quite unbelievable. Our kids and grand kids will look back to today as a time of complete ignorance and hubris..if they're lucky and oil and land wars don't wipe us all out.

Ethanol? Isn't that nail varnish remover?

[uwila]

Interesting, and ultimately a good thing. Seems a bit too ambitous to believe though. I notice they have not proposed their replacement technology presumably because they don't have one. The obvious alternative is nuclear power, but they want to reduce that too. Now, does "oil free" mean just petroleum, or are they going to get away from all fossil fuels which would include coal. CCT (clean coal technology) is a growing market. Perhaps that is their plan but I'm not sure it's a lot better than petroleum.

[peacedove]

Scandinavia is fortunate in having abundant hydel power.

"Sweden will develop biofuels from its forests".

WOnder how they will ensure that the renewal rate is higher than the destruction rate.

[Nightynight]

could be done with enough forests.
I think its an interesting idea, and am glad its being pioneered.

how will they fry chips though?

[MrsMills]

s'all bloody forests here, sick of the sight of trees.

[peacedove]

how long does it take for a forest to regrow?

How many hectares will be destroyed in that period?

Indonesia, Brazil, have lost or are losing it at a rate faster than the regeneration one.

[Tinker]

Small population to relatively large land area - easier to do than in teh UK, for instance.

[uwila]

So, if your life ambition is to be a tree planter, then Sweden may be the place for you.

[uwila]

Peacedove, what kind of biofuels can they make from the trees? What pollution/waste will be produced?

I know nothing abour biofuels from trees. Is there such a technology?

[peacedove]

Forests paying the price for biofuels

22 November 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

THE drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction

The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rising demand for green energy has led to a surge in the international price of palm oil, with potentially damaging consequences. "The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia. It is one of the most environmentally damaging commodities on the planet," says Simon Counsell, director of the UK-based Rainforest Foundation. "Once again it appears we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them in developing countries, where they have devastating effects on local people."

The main alternative to palm oil is soybean oil. But soya is the largest single cause of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. Supporters of biofuels argue that they can be "carbon neutral" because the CO2 released from burning them is taken up again by the next crop. Interest is greatest for diesel engines, which can run unmodified on vegetable oil, and in Germany bio-diesel production has doubled since 2003. There are also plans for burning palm oil in power stations.

Until recently, Europe's small market in biofuels was dominated by home-grown rapeseed (canola) oil. But surging demand from the food market has raised the price of rapeseed oil too. This has led fuel manufacturers to opt for palm and soya oil instead. Palm oil prices jumped 10 per cent in September alone, and are predicted to rise 20 per cent next year, while global demand for biofuels is now rising at 25 per cent a year.

Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth UK, which backs biofuels, says: "We need to ensure that the crops used to make the fuel have been grown in a sustainable way or we will have rainforests cleared for palm oil plantations to make bio-diesel."

From issue 2526 of New Scientist magazine, 22 November 2005, page 19

[uwila]

Hmm... is it financially feasible? What do they do with the rest of the tree? Make lots of paper, furniture, whatever?

Anyone else thinking about the Triffids?

[peacedove]

Biofuel is any fuel that derives from biomass ? recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, such as manure from cows. It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as petroleum, coal and nuclear fuels.

Agricultural products specifically grown for use as biofuels include corn and soybeans, primarily in the United States, as well as flaxseed and rapeseed, primarily in Europe. Waste from industry, agriculture, forestry, and households can also be used to produce bioenergy; examples include straw, lumber, manure, sewage, garbage and food leftovers. Most biofuel is burned to release its stored chemical energy, though research is active into more efficient methods of converting biofuels and other fuels into electricity utilizing fuel cells.

Biomass can be used both for centralized production of electricity and district heat, and for local heating. As of 2005, bioenergy covers approximately 15% of the world's energy consumption. Most bioenergy is consumed in developing countries and is used for direct heating, as opposed to electricity production. However, Sweden and Finland supply 17% and 19% [1] respectively, of their energy needs with bioenergy, a high figure for industrialized countries.

The production of biofuels to replace oil and natural gas is in active development, focusing on the use of cheap organic matter (usually cellulose, agricultural and sewage waste) in the efficient production of liquid and gas biofuels which yield high net energy gain. The carbon in biofuels was recently extracted from atmospheric carbon dioxide by growing plants, so burning it does not result in a net increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. As a result, biofuels are seen by many as a way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by using them to replace non-renewable sources of energy.

For more, see

Biofuels


Bioenergy from waste (cow dung) is being used succesfully for households in India and Pakistan, but not so widespread as it should be.

Biodiesel is being produced in the US.

I am all for using waste for this energy, although it should also be kept in mind that the Earth needs bio-ingredients returned to it for the next crop.

I am no soil- or bio-scientist, though.

[kittyfish]

My bil was going to turn his 1400 acre mixed arable beef farm over to growing biofuel crops (doesn't have to be trees) a couple of years ago but then good old Labour decided that building the plant needed to process the crops into fuel would be a waste of money when there roads and runways to build and even more civil servants to employ on think tanks on how to avoid global warming.

BTW I think Iceland is on track for being the first oil free economy so maybe Sweden is jumping the gun a bit.

[uwila]

Peacedove, I know what a biofuel is. I was looking more for details (or evidence) of a developed technology that was financially viable. The skeptic in me thinks we will be hard pressed to replace the wonderful properties of hydrocarbons.

Clean Coal Technology (a cleaner way of burning it which basically captures much of the co2 pollution) is on the horizon. But it's still a fossil fues with a finite quantity.

When we learn to get energy out of water we're in good share.

[peacedove]

I read somewhere that in the US a farmer is making a lot of money from BioDiesel. May be others.

Making this from waste or useless plants is OK, not from trees, though. I think the world has lost far too much of its forests.

Look up the wikipedia, I am sure the technology would be described there. It is financially viable enough for small farmers (US standards) to be in it.

The Germans invented a process for making hydrocarbons by steaming coal. Forgot the name of the process.

Yes, energy from the sea, lovely dream.

Fossil fuels are far too precious to be burned.

[kittyfish]

"When we learn to get energy out of water we're in good share"

It is called hydrogen, the technology is there but (cue sinister conspiracy theory music) the oil companies try their hardest to supress it.

[kittyfish]

I am pretty sure hydrogen is what fuels the booster rockets on Shuttle launches.

[speedymama]

I have just been perusing my recent copy of Chemistry World and there is an interesting article summarising a recent paper that appeared in Nature. Frank Keppler at the Max Plank Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany claims that trees and plants emit up to 30% of the world's methane, a greenhouse gas. After discovering that fallen leaves and plant litter produced methane, they investigated whether living plants also produced this highly reduced gas in air - an oxygen rich environment. He calculated that plants emitted between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year. The news has obviously shocked the atmospheric science community because of the implications for reforestation programmes.

Apparently the methane gas is produced by a chemical reaction pathway which has yet to be elucidated.

Under Kyoto protocol rules, countries are allowed to use forest sinks to offset emissions. If a country emits lots of CO2 (carbon dioxide), but plants new forests, it can substract the CO2 that the trees remove. Conseqently, the net carbon emissions from trees needs to be calculated.

This is really interesting and definitely something to monitor because of the implications for the arguments for protecting areas like the Amazon forests.

[uwila]

Kittyfish I think the existing technology is too costly to be marketable... though I'm not an expert. However, I am inclined to think that big oil companies are accused of a bit more than their due. This isn't to say they are of some high moral standard -- they are not. But, I think the issue in this case is the economics of it.

[kittyfish]

Probably right, though I do so love a good conspiracy theory.

[Blandmum]

YOu can burn anything (just about) that has hydrogen, carbon and oxygen in.....hydrocarbon fuels like petrol and gas has carbon and hydrogen in them. You can burn any carbohydrate for energy, as peacdove has listed, Biofuels already exsis and are used extensivly in developing countries. We could do the same, making biodiesel etc to run car.

This is an advantage n that it protects diminishing natural resouces,,,,we can grow more trees but we will have to wait millions of years for more coal.

Biofuels still add to the greehouse gas phenomenon, tho, since buring them gives off CO2.

Buring hydrogen alone, only gives water as a water product. However the technology to do this on a large scale is in its infacny, but this would help to solve the probelm of CO2 emmissions......as would planing lots and lots of new forests to help to grom biomass fuel....at least it would help until you burn the tree