Waste incineration, but no energy in Japan!

Japan is now on the top of the news because of its Fukushima nuclear power plant and its problems after the earthquake. We have started our discussion and collaboration with Japan about waste recovery long before this disaster. Japan is a developed country. But, it is amazing that they do not use their waste as resource, as we do in Sweden. Biogas is not on their agenda, while they just burn the waste without any usage. Let's hope our collaboration now with Japan can result in changing this view and they start extracting energy from their waste!

Swedish king and queen for waste recovery

Sweden has a king (Carl XVI Gustaf), who left the power to the parlament in 1973. But, he remains as an important symbol of the country and is a respected man in the world. His wife, the queen Silvia is also a very respected woman with a huge contribution to the humanity. Their majesties showed interest in our international environmental work (waste recovery) and will visit us in Borås in Sep. 2011. As I heard, it is the first time this pair visit Borås together. Let's hope this great news give us more energy for further international work!

Use snow to chill the summer!

In a major part of the world, we have four seasons, which means we need heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. In the old time, people used to save deep snow and ice in shadow and use it for the summer time. However, this old tradition is gone. We have chill and perhaps piles of snow in the winter and hot climate in the summer. If we can manage save this huge amount of energy for 6 months, it can be the source of our heating and cooling throughout the year!


(Remaining of snow in Borås in the middle of March. In this place snow is piled to a height up to about 10 meter during the winter, and smells down during the spring without any use)

Swedish contribution to the global reduction of CO2 emissions

Carbon emission credit is a means to regulate the global emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the moment, there are two programs named CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) and JI (Joint Implementation), in which the developed countries help more developing countries in reducing their emissions. There are today a total of about 2500 CDM projects, in which China and India absorbed about 2/3 of all the projects. A latest report by the Swedish Energy Agency, show that Sweden is financing 40 projects (3 in Brazil, 5 in India, 19 in China, one in Malaysia, one in Thailand, 2 in Vietnam, one in Benin, and 2 in Mauritius, 2 in Rwanda, 2 in Tanzania, one in Estonia and one in Romania), which cost about 300 million SEK per year. It is equal about 85 SEK/ton CO2. However, this price is much less than the tax of CO2 in Sweden (1050 SEK/ton CO2). Sweden has a goal to reduce the total CO2 in 2020 to a level of 60% of the total reduction in 1990, i.e. 31 million tons CO2 per year. You can read the report for more information (although it is in Swedish).


The geographical distribution of CDM projects in the world. Ref: www.unfccc.int