Relevant agencies in Norway and Sweden recently released some interesting statistics concerning the countries use of energy. I won’t go into any detail on this, but I thought that the two agencies (Statistics Norway and The Swedish energy agency) introduction to their chapters on district heating was quite revealing in terms of illustrating at least one dimension where the two differ significantly.  Statistics Norway say:

The consumption of district heating in 2008 was 2 917 GWh. This represents a 5,8 percent increase from 2007 and a doubling from 2000 levels.

In other words; not bad, Norway. You get a pat on your back and an honorable mention.  As in the winter Olympics, however, the Swedes have us beat:

During 2008 the consumption of biofuels for district heating amounted to 46,2 TWh[1] (excluding electricity production)(…). The consumption of woodfuels in the district heating sector have increased five-fold since 1990.

In other words, our neighbors have us beat by around 16 times, also illustrated by the fact that district heating represents around 20 percent of net domestic energy consumption in Sweden, but just over one percent in Norway. I have plenty of ideas about why this could be so, but I won’t bother the internet with that today. I’m going to Sweden to study our peculiar neighbors in a months time, though, so watch out for reports from this promised bio-land..

[1] Yes – Terra

Last week I roadtripped with one of my colleagues to Averøya near Kristiansund in order to take a look at the construction of the worlds second largest pellets factory. Based on it’s imported biomass (From Canada, Estonia and Liberia) BioWood Norway will have an annual production capacity of around 450 000 tonnes of pellets when it opens in June next year. Heavy hitters like Hafslund are involved on the investment side. At a glance you’d think the idea is pure megalomania beyond all sanity, but up close it’s quite impressing. One thing is the sheer size of the scheme, another thing is the reasoning behind it.

There is a quite boring economical side to this, of course, but I won’t go into that. What many I’ve been talking to have been skeptical about, however, is how it adds up to be beneficial climate-wise. Won’t shipping all that lumber around the globe and back again as cause more harm than good? Of course it burns a decent amount of oil, which is bad. However, it’s main customers throughout Europe more than makes up for this. How you ask?

Well, basically you can convert coal power plants to burn wood pellets in stead of coal, or you can co-fire coal and pellets. The pellets are pricier than coal, but burning it to generate electricity is a cheaper option than both windmills and solar power. EU policies aiming to produce 20% of all electricity with renewables from 2020 has created a booming pellet market, but there aren’t enough pellets around to cater for the needs of these giant customers. This is a gap BioWood aims to fill. This will obviously mean large cuts in CO2 emissions – it’s difficult to argue against the replacement of coal, even if it means burning some oil for transport.

The factory isn’t up and running yet, and a healthy dose of wait-and-see attitude could be called for. None the less I think it’s quite exciting to see that bio energy doesn’t necessarily have to be small scale, gyro gearloose-inspired highly localized oddities (even though I really like those..). If BioWood can make money AND cut emissions they should be a source of inspiration for many green entrepreneurs.