Yesterday I recieved news from the editors of the  international journal of the commons, explaining that my article “One size fits all? Institutional design: lessons from two Malawian examples” will be included in their August edition. For now it is available in full (and free) through their “future”-section in HTML-format. For anyone interested it can be accessed here.

The market for lego district heating is pretty slim, I guess…

At first during this jog I was quite cautious – after all, I wouldn’t want to get lost, would I? So, Isimply  followed the sidewalk next to the highway leading in and out of Linköping. On both sides of the road there was dense, dark forrest. Typically Swedish, eh? After about five kilometres I was quite bored with the scenary, and when I discovered a path leading into this forrest I figured checking it out  couldn’t do much damage.

To my suprise, however, when entering the forrest I found it to be more of a shell than anything else. The forrest was extremely dense wherever it faced a road or any other point where it could easily be seen by many humans, but on the inside what appeared to be a traditional  forrest was in reality as much a site for heavy industry as it was “nature”. (Pardon the somewhat crappy quality of the pictures, only had my cellphone cam).

The image above is taken from what appared to be some kind of central where different types of biomass are sorted in piles and containers. This particular site of the forest exaggerates the point slightly, but the rest of the forest displayed similar characteristics.

This image is perahps more representative. It is taken from just behind the dense “wall of trees” facing the road, but shows the difference between the wall or facade, and the “interior” of the forrest. I’m obviously speculating wildly and won’t draw any conlusions based on a small jog through the forest. The trip, however, reminded me of the claims of a Norwegian policymaker I have previously interviewed, who said that Norwegians would never tollerate the types of interventions into “nature” that the Swedish have had to endure  to achieve their high levels of bioenergy production. Perhaps this was the type of thing he was talking about?

Perhaps out of sight, out of mind shold be the next large policy-slogan for renewables also in Norway?

[1] This is the second time I collect data through jogging. I should write a methods-article on it..

Some sources claims that Norwegian end-users perceive it as an old fashion technology, a high-maintenance technology, and an environmentally un-sound solution, while others have pointed to the fact that as technologies mature and become commercially available, potential problems of the technology become more tangible. In the case of bioenergy this could represent nasty things like smoke, smell, dirt and de-forestation. The media (and the enviromental movement)have also been given their share of the blame, focusing on potential problems, and giving more  attention to other, more “sexy” types of futuristic energy technologies.

So far, however, Norwegians have little to fear since bioenergy only represents around six percent of the nation’s energy consumption, and most of this is traditional firewood. Thus, the distaste for it seems to rest on an assumption that more of it would somehow deteriorate future quality of life.

Zoom out, scroll a few clicks east, and zoom in on Sweden. Our neighbours use a lot more bioenergy than us; in fact it represents around 30% of their energy consumption – one of the highest rates in Europe (if not the highest). Like the Norwegians, the Swedes think their product have an image problem. Their problem, however, is of a different character than “ours” – the Swedish Jane and John Doe haven’t got a clue about the fact that they use this much bioenergy. In fact, a recent representative survey [1] shows that your average Swede thinks this number is less than 10%. The Swedish bioenergy business sees this as a problem, but in an odd way this should be cheering news for the Norwegians. In a setting were bioenergy is widely utilized it is not seen as a time-consuming, environmentally damaging, smelly, ugly, unsexy, weird problem – it is simply there, and it works to such an extent that people forgets that it is there.

For the Swedish case this is all a bit anecdotal, and based on very little, of course – but certainly something I’ll investigate when I’m there – because image might be everything – right, André Agassi?

[1] Gosh, two representative surveys in one blog post. Positivism here I come!

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

…or you can watch this muppets re-enactment of queens bohemian rhapsody in stead:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

The last few days I’ve been grading final exams of a third type.  The students taking a course in globalization theory at our department have been asked to complete an essay-style home exam, a task they had four days to complete. This kind of exam is great, I think, – it provides time for reflection. The students are given a real chance to mobilize the understanding they have gained through the course, instead of mindlessly regurgitating memorized facts from books. They can discuss, problematize, and bring their own experiences to the table, something they frequently do – and are rewarded for!

However, this type of exam also provides rather obvious challenges. For instance, access to the all-knowing internet represents a temptation, potentially hard to resist for those who seek to impress. This isn’t a challenge only for those writing the papers, but also for those grading it. How do you know that the impressive argument you consider giving an “A” isn’t just a mindless excercise in ctrl+c / ctrl+v? And once you’ve found one or two instances of this, how do you avoid becoming paranoid, thinking they’re all cheaters?

On the first question: basically, you don’t. For me these essays have been accompanied by an unsubstantiated creepy feeling of something being ‘off’ resulting in a Google query, again resulting in direct hits in journal articles or books. The worst example I’ve come across was a mash-up between an old article by Arjun Appadurai, and a new article in journal of economic ans social research. I know we live in a time of remix-culture, but for the cheaters out there: at least change a few words, huh? I mean, all people grading exams aren’t old men in beards, reading scrolls on how to perfect morse-tecnique. We know Google, for Gods sake, the cat’s out of the bag.

On the paranoia: just forget it, most of them aren’t cheaters, I think it’s that simple!

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.