KALMAR, Sweden — Though a fraction of Chicago’s size, this industrial city in southeast Sweden has plenty of similarities with it, including a long, snowy winter and a football team the town’s crazy about.
One thing is dramatically different about Kalmar, however: It is on the verge of eliminating the use of fossil fuels, for good, and with minimal effect on its standard of living.
Kalmar is not the only "greenest city."
Sweden's green role model city
The Swedish city of Växjö has reduced its emissions of carbon dioxide per inhabitant by nearly a quarter, and is aiming to go lower still. Now it has won a Sustainable Energy Europe Award for its environmental efforts.
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On May 23, 1707 Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus was born in a village outside Växjö. Enormously influential as a botanist, he was also one of the first to preach sustainability. Today climate change and sustainable solutions are at the top of the global agenda, and Växjö is setting an example for the world to follow.
The city, set among forests and lakes in the south of Sweden, is on a mission to become totally fossil fuel-free. And it’s well on its way. Henrik Johansson, environmental controller at Växjö’s planning department, says: "More than 50 percent of the city’s total energy comes from renewable sources."
See here.
What is this green miracle in Sweden you think?
It is not solar though there is solar. It is not wind power though there are probably wind turbines. Nobody wants to freeze in the dark in Sweden with intermittent power.
It is not nukes though some think nuclear winter is a fine way to fight global warming.
It is not geothermal because Sweden is as reluctant to generate power from geothermal as Vermont.
A clue to solving the mystery can be found in a Swedish company in Florida:
Welcome to Green Circle
As the renewable energy sector is in its formative years of becoming a large scale industry, Green Circle has been established with the purpose of becoming a major player in the international market for alternative, carbon neutral energy.
Bio Green Circle does it with a plantation.
No not that kind of plantation. Rather a tree plantation. Bio Green Circle makes pine trees from its plantations into wood pellets and then ship them to Europe where they are co-fired with coal.
Hardly ideal. There is no real need for tree plantations with all the waste wood available IMO. Co-firing wood pellets with coal means you have a coal burning power plant.
But at least Europeans want to burn less coal unlike American companies that prefer the real unadulterated coal and plan to magically make it clean.
But now maybe you can see the answer to the riddle.
The Swedish green cities are burning wood.
Fancy that.
Lots of Americans seem not to have heard of such a thing. They dream of intermittent power doing it all, an updated national grid that isn't happening, massive increases in nuclear power with no Jackass Flats to store the waste forever and ever, solar satellites zapping power down to earthlings on radio beams, all manner of things.
But burning wood? Green?
You betcha.
And it's happening even in this backward land though it's an uphill struggle.
Best, Terry