Sweden has a big head start. Its electricity, for example, is already generated with next to no use of fossil fuels. Around half comes from hydropower and the remainder largely from nuclear. The UK, by contrast, already gets more than 70 per cent of its electricity from coal and gas, with less than five per cent from hydro and less than 20 per cent from nuclear. And with a land area nearly twice the size of the UK but home to one seventh the population, Sweden has far more space to produce biomass-mainly crops and wood-for conversion to fuels such as ethanol or for high temperature gasification and efficient combustion. Even so, some energy analysts are doubtful that even Sweden can pull it off. "There is no way Sweden can be truly oil independent by 2020," says Kevin Anderson of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. "Even if it could somehow phase out oil use in ground transport at home, Swedes would still fly, and would, most likely, depend on oil-fuelled shipping for imports and exports."
It would be almost impossible for the UK to go 100 per cent oil-free at a sensible cost"Clive Bates, head of environment policy at the Environment Agency, says it would be a hard act to follow. "It would be almost impossible for the UK to go 100 per cent oil-free at a sensible cost and virtually impossible to pull off politically," he says. "What's more, it could distract from the art of the possible-the very real improvements we can make."
One of those improvements is wind power. While this currently accounts for less than one per cent of both countries' electricity production, the UK has better future options, with more of the "right kind of wind" than any country in Europe.
Sweden's plan to reduce its dependency on oil will be done without the help of nuclear power, which will be phased out and balanced by an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and demand management. This includes investment and long term, predictable energy taxes offset by reductions in taxes on labour. Efficiency of energy-use per unit-area of building is to increase by 20 per cent within 15 years, and efforts will be made to discourage people from using their cars.
But no matter how tough Sweden's government gets, petrol-driven cars will be a tough habit to break. Late last year the government put together the Commission on Oil Independence to review the possibilities, drawing on a broad base of industry expertise from the car-maker Volvo, farming, unions and the scientific community. The commission has yet to publish its initial report, but many question its usefulness: increased fuel efficiency and a reduction in the number of car journeys will not make Sweden oil-free if the fuel its vehicles use still comes from crude oil.
Sweden says it will work with other countries in the EU to increase the proportion of ethanol in the fuel mix across the EU, for which there is currently a target of five per cent by 2012.
Given its size and population, Sweden could, theoretically, go to 100 per cent. But the UK would need to depend on imports of biofuels from overseas, for example palm oil and other biofuels from countries such as Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia.
This will have knock-on effects. Indonesia is already planning to triple the size of oil palm plantations on Borneo, one of the last refuges of rainforest and countless species millions of years old. Indonesia may also find itself having to import coal to meet its own power needs, even as it exports biofuel to Europe-thereby bumping up global emissions.
At home, the UK's options are limited by sheer lack of space and by a lack of interest from the private sector. "We see hydrocarbons continuing to play a central role in the fuel mix for the indefinite future," says a BP spokesman.
John Whitelegg, an international authority on transport, says the UK should be bold, aiming for a reduction in green-house gas and fossil fuel use by more than 60 per cent by 2050. "There should be an EU-wide medium distance strategy to remove all flights that are less than 500km, through rail investment and carbon caps on airports."
Still, the optimists are not daunted. "It would be perfectly possible for any rich, sophisticated country to reduce net greenhouse emissions to zero over 20 or 25 years," says Roger Levett, a consultant working with a variety of UK authorities and organisations. "Given what we now know about the global climate, this is the only sensible course. Anything else is suicide for our civilisation, if not for our species, although quite possibly that, too."
