SWEDEN 728 SWEDEN SWEDEN 1. GENERAL INFORMATION 1.1. General Overview Sweden is a long narrow country in the northern part of Europe and borders Norway in the west, Finland in the north east and the Baltic Sea in the South and east, as shown in Figure 1. The total length from north to south is 1,600 kilometres and the land area is 410,932 square kilometres. The size of the area is the third in Western Europe after France and Spain. The area is almost twice as big as that of Great Britain. The north-west part of Sweden consist of mountains with a slope towards the east. There are many rivers in the north and lakes are scattered all over the country. Sweden’s coast line is more than 2,000 kilometres long. FIG. 1. Location of Sweden in Europe. The northern boundary is about 250 kilometres north of the north polar circle 66°30´, but because of the Gulf Stream coming from west, the climate is not of a polar type. The average temperature over the year varies between -1.5 °C in the north to 7.8 °C in the south. The population data in Table 1 show a very slow increase of the population. In 1998, Sweden had 8.9 million inhabitants. The population density is 21.6 persons per square kilometres, however, the northern part of Sweden is sparsely populated with smaller than 20% of the inhabitants living in the northern half of the country. SWEDEN 729 There are no other domestic energy sources except hydro and bioenergy (used mainly in the pulp and paper industry) exploited. There are, however large amounts of low grade uranium, 10,000 metric tonnes of uranium in ores containing between 500 and 2,000 grams uranium per tonne and 300,000 metric tonnes of uranium in still lower grades. There is no economic incitement to exploit such low grade uranium ores and no uranium mines are in use. Fuel for the nuclear power plants is imported. Most of the hydro electric power is located in the north, and the electricity is transported to the south by several large 400 kV lines. All the nuclear power plants are in the southern part of Sweden as shown in Figure 2. Because of the abundance of rivers and lakes, all thermal power plants (nuclear or fossil) are cooled by sea, lakes or river water. Cooling towers at power plants can not be found in Sweden. Hydro Power Installed Capacity 31/12 ´98 16204 MW Nuclear Power Installed Capacity 31/12 ´98 10052 MW FIG. 1. Location of Power Stations in Sweden TABLE 1. POPULATION INFORMATION Growth rate (%) 1980 1960 1970 1980 1990 1996 1997 1998 to 1998 Population (millions) 7.5 8.0 8.3 8.6 8.8 8.8 8.9 0.4 Population density (inhabitants/km²) 17 18 18 19 20 21 22 0.6 Urban population as percent of total 73 81 83 83 83 83 N/A - Area (1000 km²) 450.0 Source: IAEA Energy and Economic Database; World Development Indicators (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank); Country Information. 1.2. Economic indicators Table 2 shows the historical Gross Domestic Product data. 730 SWEDEN TABLE 2. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP) Growth rate (%) 1980 1970 1980 1990 1996 1997 1998 to 1998 GDP(1) 33,670 125,560 229,760 251,750 227,640 224,953 3.3 GDP(2) 152,570 185,170 225,930 234,230 237,040 N/A - GDP(3) per capita 4,186 15,110 26,844 28,469 25,724 25,276 2.9 GDP by sector (%) : -Agriculture N/A 4 3 N/A N/A N/A - -Industry N/A 34 34 N/A N/A N/A - -Services N/A 63 63 N/A N/A N/A - (1) Millions of current US$. (2) Millions of constant 1995 US$. (3) Current US$ per capita. Source: World Development Indicators (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank). The Gross National Product (GNP) annual growth trend for the year 1993 to 1998 is 2,7 %. 1.3. Energy situation Sweden´s energy requirement is covered both by imported energy, primarily oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear fuel and by domestic energy in the form of hydropower, wood and peat plus waste products from the forestry industry (bark and liquors), see table 3. Originally, all energy was domestic, primarily wood and hydropower. However during the 19th century, coal began to be imported. Coal came to play an important role up until World War II, when oil and hydropower together become the base of the energy supply. The first oil crisis in 1973 demonstrated the risk of being dependant upon oil. As early on as during the 60s, a decision had been made to invest in nuclear power. Nuclear power and domestic fuels then came to be responsible for a large part of the substitution for oil, together with the more efficient utilization of energy, primarily in the heating sector. The greatest changes occurring between 1973 and 1997 were that the proportion of oil used in the energy supply fell from 71 to 30% and that nuclear power rose from 1 to 36%. When studying the trend for the supply of energy, it is customary to add the various energy products without regard to their respective "Qualities". Certain energy products, primarily nuclear power and hydropower cannot be utilized by the end -user, instead having first to be converted into a more manageable energy carrier, e.g. electricity or district heating. Thus, losses in nuclear power and hydropower plants are often ignored. Sweden is now increasingly using the internationally-prevalent calculation method of, in the case of hydropower, calculation the gross production as supplied energy and, in the case of nuclear power, the energy content of the fuel. †In Swedish hydropower stations, losses are about 1% and in the nuclear power plants about 68%, using this method of calculation. If only the net generation of electricity is take into account the net generation of electricity in the hydropower and nuclear power stations, Sweden´s supply of energy in 1998 was, 412 TWh compared 584 TWh according to the new international method of calculation. Table 3 shows Swedish supply of energy and Table 4 the historical energy data. SWEDEN 731 TABLE 3. SUPPLY OF ENERGY (excl. bunker oil and deposits for non-energy purposes) 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 % TWh TWh TWh TWh TWh Crude oil and oil products 170 167 182 165 168 29 Coal and coke 27 27 30 25 25 4 Natural gas 9 9 9 9 9 2 Peat 3 4 4 3 3 1 Biofuels 39 41 45 46 48 8 Spent liquors inn forestry 32 34 34 36 36 6 Rubbish 4 5 5 5 5 1 Waste heat, etc 7 7 7 7 7 1 Hydropower gross* 59 68 52 69 74 13 Nuclear power, fuel* 214 204 222 204 218 37 Imports of electricity, net 0 -2 6 -3 -10 -2 TOTAL 565 564 594 566 584 100 (*412) Of which bio and fossil fuel for 13 12 22 13 13 2 electricity generation *see explanation in text † above. Source: Country Information. 1.4 Energy policy Since the 1970s, there has been a general policy to increase the energy efficiency and to decrease the use of oil. The use of more domestic energy sources as bioenergy and wind is preferred of environmental reasons. It is possible to increase the hydro power capacity on an economical scale with about 15 TWh per year, but the policy (since 1970) is to save the remaining rivers from exploitation of environmental reasons. Since the end of the 1980s there is also a general policy not to increase the releases of carbon dioxide and in a longer perspective to decrease the use of fossil fuel. During the important climate conference in Kyoto in 1997, the countries of the word reached agreement that emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases had to be cut. Reduced emission of climate gases at the lowest cost require international co-operation in order to ensure that the most cost-efficient measures are taken. A market for emission rights is one way of achieving this. Thus, great expectations were attached to the important climate meeting in Buenos Aires in November 1998, e.g. that rules would be created for “trading in emission rights”. However, negotiations did not achieve any such results. At the end of the year, the Swedish Power Association launched a model for practically arranging the trade in emission rights, while retaining the possibility of an efficient trade in electricity on an open European electricity market. This financial instruments is solely based on the absence of greenhouse gas emissions. The Swedish climate certificate model has aroused great interest in Sweden and a number of EU countries. The European Commission is discussion the drafting of rules that will facilitate such trade. 1.4.1. The nuclear power issue. As a result of the energy agreement between the Social Democrats and the Left and Central Parties at the beginning of 1997, the “Nuclear Power Decommission Act” became law in January 1998. The Act allows the government, within a specified framework to decide that the right to operate a nuclear reactor will cease to apply at a certain point in time. Such a decision infers the right to compensation by the state for losses incurred. 732 SWEDEN In February 1998, the government decided to revoke the operating license for Barsebäck 1, effective July 1st 1998.