Emission Possible

Age
Monday 18/6/2007 Page: 7

The Howard Government has warned of economic disaster if carbon emissions are cut too drastically. But in Sweden the opposite has occurred. Bold policies have turned a city into a eco-powerhouse.

IN THE cool forest region of southern Sweden, the city of Vaxjo has turned off the heating oil, even on the darkest, snowbound days of winter. Coal, too, is gone and next on the fossil fuel hit list is petrol. In the underground car park of the local government offices, there are no private vehicles, just a communal green-car fleet. Staff who cycle or take the local biogas buses to work book ahead to drive - fuelling up on biogas or E85, a blend of 85 per cent renewable ethanol. Petrol is still readily available to the public, but carbon emissions in Sweden are heavily taxed. Drivers pays about 80 cents a litre extra at the bowser.

Vaxjo is chasing a future free of fossil fuels, and it's almost halfway there without having sacrificed lifestyle, comfort or economic growth. When local politicians announced the phasing out in 1996, it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around a manageable $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate. Today, at least one international delegation a week - mainly from China and Japan - beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it's done.

The Vaxjo model has been repeated all over Sweden, creating a network of "climate" municipalities. Sweden's total emissions have long been falling and last year the Government announced its own ambitious national goal: to end oil dependency by 2020. Today, Sweden's annual greenhouse gas emissions are just over five tonnes per capita, compared with Australian and US levels in the high 20s and climbing. That's before calculating Sweden's forests, which serve as huge carbon sinks that could offset emissions by another 30 per cent. In Vaxjo, it's 3.5 tonnes of carbon per capita, the lowest urban level in Europe.

Meanwhile, the heavily taxed Swedish economy has clawed its way up into the world's top five, partly due to cutting-edge "clean tech". The first step towards Vaxjo's - and Sweden's - success was the city power plant. Today, its giant smokestack towers over the pristine lakes, parks and cycle ways, barely emitting a puff of steam. Inside there's a huge furnace, similar to those that burn coal. But the suffocating heat feels and smells like a sauna. Wood chips, sawdust and other wood waste discarded by local forestry industries are burning at extremely high temperatures to produce electricity.

Then, instead of dumping the cooling water, as most power stations do, it's pumped out scalding to the city's taps and to another vast network of pipes. The second delivery system of insulated pipes runs hot water continuously through heaters in homes and offices. The water leaves the plant at over 100 degrees, travels as far as 10 kilometres and comes back warm to be reheated, over and over again. An enormous municipal hot-water tank acts as back-up, so showers never go cold.

"Everyone used to have oil burners for heating and the city was very dirty. We had to do something," says operator Hakan Eliasson. He started his career in coal, he says, but loves the mountains of pungent woodchips and the blue skies. Consumers, too, are happy; biofuels are cheaper than oil. The Vaxjo plant was the first in Sweden to switch from oil to bioenergy. It was the beginning of a nationwide energy conversion, the single most significant factor to date in Sweden's falling emissions. But, says Vaxjo city technical officer, So Hie Kim-Hellstrom, power plant conversions are not nearly enough.

In Vaxjo and elsewhere, there's been a relentless effort to get people out of cars and onto bikes and buses, to redesign housing, to encourage high-density living over urban sprawl and to start teaching green lessons from preschool. More than 30 per cent of energy, she says, can be saved just by changing the way people live. But they need to be persuaded; the city charges petrol-run vehicles, for example, to park, while low-emissions vehicles may park for free.

Vaxjo's next big environmental first is partially concealed under a mammoth custom-built tent on the lake front. It's a 67-unit, eight storey apartment block in a new, high-density wooden city; the first high-rise wooden building in Europe. Unlike high-energy steel, concrete and other manufactured building materials, wood is carbon neutral, requires less processing and insulates well. The tent is to keep the site dry to prevent warping and swelling; the one technical challenge not yet overcome is how to build in rain. "When we first started the fossil fuel-free campaign a lot of people complained that the economy would be ruined, now we have lots of new businesses and the city is growing," Kim-Hellstrom says.

But, don't get the idea it is a quick or easy process. Every single new energy-efficient light bulb is important. "We've been working for a very long time to get where we are." Nor could Vaxjo and other Swedish towns and cities have come so far without sweeping changes in Sweden's national policies. In 1991, Sweden introduced the world's first carbon tax, slugging carbon emissions at a hefty $US 100 a tonne, double the rate economists now suggest would sharply accelerate the development of renewable energy worldwide.

Initially, the environment was only part of the motivation; energy security was a more immediate concern. With no coal or oil reserves, Sweden's economy had been badly shaken by successive oil shocks. Like other European nations, Sweden had turned to nuclear and hydropower in the 1960s and '70s. But, in a referendum in 1980, Swedes voted to eventually dismantle nuclear power, forcing a search for alternative energy sources. Two nuclear reactors have since been shut down, but nuclear power remains an important part of a virtually emissions-free electricity sector.

In theory, Swedes liked the idea of reducing their economic reliance on oil cartels and the volatile Middle East. But the economy was then in recession and businesses forecast dire consequences. Many energy intensive businesses, such as car makers and aluminium smelters, won big concessions, but they still had to pay $US25 a tonne of carbon emissions, while their international competitors paid nothing.

At the time this was very radical and the tax was very, very high," says environmental economist Professor Tomas Kaberger. But suddenly we had thousands of entrepreneurs looking for low-cost, biological waste products that could be used for producing electricity and heat more cheaply than fossil fuels. They found residues in the forestry industry, waste in the food industry and agriculture and even wet, putrid garbage." Dumping combustible bio-waste in landfill was also banned, so garbage collection agencies were very happy to pay the new power plants operators to take their rubbish, he says.

Another biofuel frontier that quietly opened was flexible-fuel vehicles. SAAB began developing cars that take petrol or up to 85 per cent biofuel blends; keeping a low profile for fear of derision from a global market besotted with gas-guzzling four-wheel-drives. Now, with Volvo and Ford, SAAB is selling flexible-fuel vehicles across Europe, where ethanol-based fuels are rapidly gaining ground. For Swedish car buyers, there's a new 1000 ($1590) government rebate on every green car.

But Swedes are still encouraged to take the train instead of driving, because road transport emissions are the most difficult to bring down. Swedish railways offer emission calculators for consumers to assess every trip. A high-speed electric train from Stockholm to Vaxjo, for example, emits two grams of carbon dioxide per person, a car with two passengers 39.54 kilograms and a 737 aircraft, 65 per cent full, 58.15 kilograms. Flying one way adds up to about $20 worth of environmental damage, according to Swedish railways. Scandinavian Airlines, however, does offer passengers the option of buying a carbon offset with their seats.

In a major national survey last year, 80 per cent of Swedes said they are willing to pay more for services or products provided by a companies working to limit emissions and over half want even more punitive costs imposed on polluting industries. Culturally, there's probably an undercurrent of "lagom" in play. The word dates back to the communal beer bowls of Viking times. To drink too greedily was frowned on. The small personal sacrifices involved in living in a carbon-constrained economy echo the moderation that ensured everyone got a fair share of the beer.

Economies cannot be transformed without a carbon price, says Kaberger. But a carbon tax shouldn't be just another cost to the economy; the revenue allows governments to lower tax in other sectors. Since 1991, the carbon tax has been increased to $US150 a tonne, and the industry rate doubled to $US50. Yet economic growth is more than 5 per cent and unemployment about 4 per cent, partly due to booming clean-tech industries and record export sales for Sweden's big companies, such as Volvo, Ericsson and Telia.

Whether Sweden will meet its 2020 goal is not certain. Arguably, the conversion of electricity and heating plants to biofuel was the easy part. The big hurdle, for Sweden and the world, is automotive fuel. Globally, fuel consumption and emissions are soaring, especially in China and India. The answer may lie in Sweden's Arctic north, where locals refer to their vast forests as "green gold".

The world has oil sheikhs who made their money from black gold, the idea is that we will become tree tsars in the biofuel era," says one local, laughing. But, he's only half joking. Ethanol for vehicles is manufactured from crops such as corn, wheat and sugar cane. There are reasonable concerns that the world's forests -themselves critical carbon sinks and the protectors of the planet's bio-diversity - are threatened by the expansion of land-intensive biofuel crops. Poor nations, too, could suffer food shortages if crops are diverted to manufacture biofuels for industrial economies.

Sweden's sparsely populated northern frontier, ice-bound and dark in winter, is pinning its hopes on an experimental fuel plant. Second-generation automotive biofuels made from forest and agricultural waste would dramatically reduce pressure on land, minimising the global environmental collision between forests and biofuel farms. It's working; both gas and liquid vehicle fuels are being produced from cellulose. But, it's not yet commercially viable.

Stephan Edman, one of the original architects of the greening of Vaxjo and the national push to phase out oil, says the development of biofuels for transport could still fail, halting Sweden's progress. After decades on the environmental front line, Edman concedes it's been a long, hard fight despite Swedes' deep-seated respect for nature, tolerance of high taxes and concern for the common good. And, whatever emissions level Sweden will have, there will be little impact on global warming; its greenhouse gases were never more than 0.5 per cent of the world total.

But, the best argument has always been the economic one," Edman says. "Clean technology and energy solutions are the biggest emerging global sectors. We can earn a lot of money and create a lot of jobs by being at the frontier. "We are a small country, but we're exporting management, ideas and technical solutions to China and elsewhere. And China is sending technicians here to work for free just to learn. That's our chance to make a difference."

Link: www.vaxjo.se