The Oil Drum: Peak Oil and the Environment Day 2, Part 1

So how was the last day? It began with the Hon. Mona Sahlin, Swedish Minister for Sustainable Development and a member of a Government with the intent to “increase social happiness” as a goal rather than “filling the gap” between projected available oil and gas and supplies. And so Sweden will move towards independence from imported fuel, with a Commission that is developing a plan to achieve this. The plan is helped by the extensive use of district heating where houses are heated collectively from central boilers (as happens on the odd campus in the United States). By using biomass to provide that heat (61% of the need) they can go a fair way toward their target. In order to change fuels since, as they say “they love the car, but hate the gasoline,” they are adjusting taxes and provide incentives such as free parking to drivers of hybrids and biofueled cars. They are also investing heavily in research into getting gas from biomass and across the board R & D to develop alternate technologies and resources. (It is paying off, since this technology is now the 8th largest export commodity).

(this is just one of the paragraph summaries of about ten speakers from Heading Out’s tour of the PO&E conference…)
Much more after the jump to The Oil Drum.