Par videi draudzīgo Zviedrijas pilsētu Vaxjo

"IN THE cool forest region of southern Sweden, the city of Vaxjo has turned off the heating oil, even on the darkest, snowbound days of winter.
Coal, too, is gone and next on the fossil fuel hit list is petrol. In the underground car park of the local government offices, there are no private vehicles, just a communal green-car fleet. Staff who cycle or take the local biogas buses to work book ahead to drive - fuelling up on biogas or E85, a blend of 85 per cent renewable ethanol.
Petrol is still readily available to the public, but carbon emissions in Sweden are heavily taxed. Drivers pays about 80 cents a litre extra at the bowser.
Vaxjo is chasing a future free of fossil fuels, and it's almost halfway there without having sacrificed lifestyle, comfort or economic growth.
When local politicians announced the phasing out in 1996, it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around a manageable $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate. Today, at least one international delegation a week mainly from China and Japan beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it's done.
The Vaxjo model has been repeated all over Sweden, creating a network of "climate" municipalities. Sweden's total emissions have long been falling and last year the Government announced its own ambitious national goal: to end oil dependency by 2020.
Today, Sweden's annual greenhouse gas emissions are just over five tonnes per capita, compared with Australian and US levels in the high 20s and climbing. That's before calculating Sweden's forests, which serve as huge carbon sinks that could offset emissions by another 30 per cent. In Vaxjo, it's 3.5 tonnes of carbon per capita, the lowest urban level in Europe.
Meanwhile, the heavily taxed Swedish economy has clawed its way up into the world's top five, partly due to cutting-edge "clean tech".
The first step towards Vaxjo's and Sweden's success was the city power plant. Today, its giant smokestack towers over the pristine lakes, parks and cycle ways, barely emitting a puff of steam. Inside there's a huge furnace, similar to those that burn coal. But, the suffocating heat feels and smells like a sauna. Wood chips, sawdust and other wood waste discarded by local forestry industries are burning at extremely high temperatures to produce electricity."

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