Sweden To Be Oil-Free By 2020

Philoneist.com writes "Treehugger is reporting that the 'Minister for Sustainable Development Mona Sahlin has declared that Sweden is going to become the first country in the world to break the dependence on fossil energy.'" Sweden's hope is to have all of the country's energy supplied by only renewable resources, ridding the country of cars that run on gasoline and oil-heated homes.

Comments

So....

[brunes69]

... how tough is the immigration process?

Not just Sweden

[little1973]

The whole world will be oil free by 2020, because oil will be too expensive to use as a fuel. Do not forget, the peak is near.

Re:Not just Sweden

[pla]

The whole world will be oil free by 2020, because oil will be too expensive to use as a fuel. Do not forget, the peak is near.

Although we may not have passed peak production yet, if you take price-to-extract and new reserve discovery rates into consideration, we passed peak a few years ago.

However! I too used to worry about peak oil, until I learned to stop worrying and love the methane hydrate ice.

You've probably heard of it, but don't realize just how much the planet has... Seriously on the order of 20x the world's total oil reserves, in terms of energy capacity.

On the down side, current estimates put the breakeven price of extraction at around $90 per-barrel-equivalent. So it won't let us keep driving cheap-fuel-sucking SUVs forever (Then again, I consider that a good thing*), but we don't need to worry about the global economy collapsing overnight due to literally running out of gas.



* - I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil (though possibly not heating oil, but that gets into a regulatory nightmare considering that you can use diesel and #2 interchangeably, sulfur emmissions aside) to put it at over $10/gallon. Not only would the extra tax revenue allow reducing other taxes, but people would have a strong financial incentive to drive less, carpool more, and buy more efficient vehicles.

Re:Not just Sweden

[nativequeue]

> However! I too used to worry about peak oil, until I learned to stop worrying and love the methane hydrate ice.

I like the methan hydrate where it is, deep down at ocean floors. We better not dig that up and disperse it in our environment.

> I've said for years that as the single best thing the US could do for the planet, tax the hell out of fuel oil

Most EU countries are already doing this. Thats why diesel fuel used for heating homes is colored, its not taxed the same way as diesel for automobiles is.

Re:Not just Sweden

[Noryungi]

Whether Peak Oil will happen in 2020 (or sooner/or later) does not mean Oil will disappear overnight. What will happen is what happened in the 1970s: an "Oil Shock".

An Oil Shock, in turn, means there will be tremendous economic problems to be solved, but it does not mean the End of the World. I suspect a lot of people will adapt to the new circumstances. They won't like it, but they will adapt, because this is what humans do best.

In the worst possible case, I think governments will strongly intervene -- they will have to -- to guarantee (and subsidize) oil supplies to the most crucial consumers (food producers, electricity producers, emergency responders, armed forces) while the rest of us will have to use mass transportation and convert ASAP to a regimen of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

That really sucks if you live in a country with poor mass transportation like, uh... 90% of the United States. It's going to be mostly OK in many European countries, where mass transportation (including high-speed trains) is already a fact of life and renewable energies are being increasingly adopted. I am not saying it will be a walk in the park, because it won't be, but most wealthy countries consume too much energy and waste so much of it.

Other things that will be very dodgy will be the survival of airlines and of most cargo ships. But, even there, there are solutions: blimps, for instance, are much more efficient than airplanes energy-wise, and can cross the Atlantic in a couple of days at most. Clipper ships, that are powered by wind, the ultimate renewable energy, can be brought back from the dead and maintain vital commercial links between continents. I also strongly suspect that nuclear-powered giant cargoes will be used in the near future, if Peak Oil becomes a reality.

Sure, these are slow methods of transcontinental transportation, but it's better than no transportation at all.

And, of course, it is a lot more efficient to organize teleconferences and email links than it is to send people from one end of the world to the other anyway.

Finally, don't forget that an Oil Shock will make all other sources of energy economically viable. Wind, Solar, Sea Tides, Geothermal, etc. will all become competitive once the price of Oil goes through the roof. And that's a good thing as far as I am concerned, since Oil consumption is also one of the major reasons Global Warming is taking place...

For more information on this, I do recommend the many documents published by the Rocky Mountain Institute, including "Winning the Oil End Game". Recommended readings before you start to panic.

The Swedes can do it if anyone can

[LeninZhiv]

Heck, they already managed to change from driving on the left to driving on the right--that's more than most countries could pull off!

So will everyone else

[The Fun Guy]

... which is why the Swedes, the Germans, the Chinese, the Americans and everyone else have to get over their reluctance to embrace nuclear power. As oil gets more scarce, it will get more expensive. After our fourth or fifth hideously expensive war to secure, yet again, access to "our" oil, the politicians will finally run a cost-benefit analysis. The oil will be so expensive that it's just better to let Venezuela, Saudi Arabia or some other OPEC country go to hell and redirect our time and effort into energy independence. Not short-term BS like ANWR or LNG, but the only viable long-term energy option, nuclear fission.

"But what about all the waste?", cry the environmentalists, "don't despoil Yucca Mountain with those mountains of radioactive waste!" Sooner or later, somebody is going to wake up to the fact that breeder reactors that use fuel recycing produce less than 3% of that high level waste that would go into Yucca. When the volumes are that low, you can just glassify it, sink the glass pieces in an ingot of lead and encase the ingots in 5-ton concrete casks and put them in neat rows in a parking lot somewhere. Put up a razor wire fence and that's that. No chance of anyone stealing it for dirty bombs because the casks are so damned heavy ("physical security"), even if the concrete cracks in 30 years the glass won't go anywhere, and the local town will welcome the jobs for Buford and Billy Joe to walk around the fence thirty times a night at $17.50/hr.

Don't want a permanent radioactive waste dump on the outskirts of your town? Call it a "Temporary Cask Transit Facility" and shuffle the casks around every now and again to make it look like they aren't there permanently. "Renew the lease" on the land every 10 years to give you an opportunity to re-bribe the new set of elected officials in town, and make sure you paint the casks every year as part of "safety inspections" to keep them looking neat and safe... that will give jobs to Jim Bob and Cyrus, too.

In the end, you can spend $10,000,000 a year on each of 100 different "Temporary Cask Transit Facilities" for 100 years and still end up cheaper than Yucca Mountain, while offering 1000x the storage capacity.

Lol boy are you wrong

[SmallFurryCreature]

I am socialist, I live in holland and ALWAYS vote leftwing and think Holland would do better looking at the swedish model then the american model. I am just aware that a lot of the people here are american and not fully aware what exactly it means to live in places with a large social securit system.

BUT I do not want to tell americans that they are wrong. They can run their country the way they want to. In such a way I am not taking sides. I do think the swedish system makes a better system for ME, americans would in general feel different.

Perhaps if you got of your high moral horse for a while you would be able to accept that different people prefer different societies.