Renewable Energy in Sweden
According to the United Nations Human Development Report Index, Sweden’s renewable energy consumption is at 49.9 percent as of 2016. That is extremely high in comparison to that of the United States, which is 7.9 percent. Generally speaking, when a country has this high of a percentage of renewable energy as their total final energy consumption, one would think positively about this because renewable energy is said to be better for the environment and is a more sustainable way to produce power. Due to the evidence of CO2 emissions that are released by the burning of fossil fuels and the awareness of their effects on our atmosphere, people have started to take action and have become more receptive towards change. Sweden has been one of the most conscious and successful countries in terms of alternative energy.
Specifically relying on hydropower as their main renewable energy source, they have minimized their oil usage to about 20 percent from the 75 percent that it once was. Few countries consume more energy per capita than Sweden, yet their carbon emission levels are still lower than most countries. According to the latest statistics from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the average Swede releases 4.25 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year into the atmosphere, compared with the EU average of 6.91 tons and the US average of 16.15 tons. As of 2014, hydropower takes up around 40 percent of Sweden’s energy use in general. Although that is a remarkable level of alternative energy created from one source, hydropower can come with heavy environmental impacts.
Because hydropower comes with these environmentally detrimental impacts as well as a restriction on expansion due to locations that provide the ability to build dams and have a large enough water source, I would like to start a research initiative for the Swedish Energy Agency to study the different types of alternative energy to compare and contrast their costs, advantages, disadvantages, benefits, environmental impacts, reliability, and social impacts to that of hydropower.
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