A recent article in the Norwegian magazine “bioenergi” states that Trondheim Energi, the county’s largest energy provider, will now be purchasing large quantities of timber to cater for their needs in terms of biomass for district heating over the coming winter. To me this is interesting, because I’ve done a case study on their old supplier of woodchip-logs, Trondheim biobrensel. This company has been in trouble for a while, but I wasn’t sure that this article meant that they had ceased to exist as a business.

Yesterday, however, I decided to blend some hardcore detective-work into my daily jog. In stakeout-style I ran past their premises, casually looking through windows and generally checking out the state of things. Sure enough, it had changed since the last time I was there. The sign on the wall, as well as a sign a few hundred metres down the road, giving directions to the company were dismantled. I can’t say for certain if they are definently out of business or not, but it certainly seems to be the case.

Seems I have some unexpected phonecalls and interviews to conduct over the next few days..

I have rarely (if ever?) posted on matters related to gender on this blog, but a photograph taken by my father on his holiday in Austria this summer prompted me to address the internet with a brief comment. Basically, the photograph depicts an underground parking lot in a shopping center. This lot has a few spaces which are wider than the rest and located closer to the entrance. “Ah, probably have the familiar sign depicting a wheelchair“, you’d think. Well, guess again:

Now, I won’t go into any kind of analysis of this, I guess the content speaks for it self. I wonder, however, how long it would take before a sign like this would see extensive news-coverage in Norway. It’s certainly also a nice and explicit illustration of how actions, skills and objects can become gendered.

That’s it, told you it would be brief.

Norwegian companies producing heat based on biomass mainly target public agencies and public buildings. The reason is quite simple, these buildings often have the needed infrastructure in terms of water-carried heat, and are quite easily (and cheaply) converted. The situation for private homes is different,  most dwellings today have a heating system based on electricity or a combination of electricity and an oven for traditional firewood. Only a fraction of Norwegian homes have heating-solutions utilizing water-carried heat.

Looking at the past, however, it wasn’t always clear that this would become the case. The following graph displays new homes constructed in Norway from around year 1900 to 2001and what type(s) of heating system(s) was used (pardon the Norwegian explanation) [1] [2]

Basically the graph displays the difference between four combination of heating systems: Direct electricity, direct electricity + an oven for firewood, water-carried heat, and finally water-carried heat + an oven for firewood. In addition I’ve made two graphs summarizing the two: the total number of homes mainly using electricity, and the total number of homes mainly using water-carried heat.

Looking at the pre-war [3] years the different solutions “fought” side by side, even though electricity was slightly more popular. After the war, and particularly in the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, electricity came to dominate the scene. This can be contrasted with the Swedish experience, for example, where currently around 50% of all new homes are equipped with water-carried heat (haven’t found any primary statistics, though – if you know where to find them, please let me know!).

The next graph shows the distribution of heat production in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland  and Denmark. This includes “everything” that needs heating, not only private homes, but you can still see electricity dominating heavily in Norway compared to it’s neighbors(Pardon the ugliness and low resolution of the graph – it’s taken from a government white paper, so no taxpayers money was spent on fancy fuzz).

The Norwegian development isn’t all that strange, I guess. It accelerated at a time when Norway was investing heavily in large hydroelectric power plants. Eventually our electricity prices became really cheap, so choosing this fuel was only rational. The problem, though, is that the pervasiveness this  technological system achieved for historical reasons makes it almost impossible to switch away from that system today. If you’re an average homeowner, there is really very little you can do. In 1998 (in the same white paper as that ugly graph comes from) the Norwegian authorities estimated the cost of conversion of a 160 square meters house from electricity to wood pellets and water-carried heat at roughly 65-75 000 Norwegian kroner. In addition you will have increased costs on maintenance and your expenses on fuel will surpass the current cost of electricity. In other words: no, it’s not really going to happen, is it?

My argument in this post isn’t very sophisticated, but I think this serves as a nice reminder of the impacts  past choices can have on current possibilities (so politicians of today, beware!), as well as something that could be used for a more elaborate discussion on the concepts of path-dependency and technological lock-in. Might do that here at some point.

[1] The numbers are taken from Statistics Norway’s nifty statistics bank.

[2] What ever you do – DON’T MENTION THE WAR!

[3] F*ck!