Sweden Vs. Hawaii

Sweden Vs. Hawaii

__________

Since the 70’s, consumption of oil in the United States has exponentially increased. The call for an alternate energy has not become strong until around the turn of the century. There has been an increase of around 20% for the price of oil in just a year. Many western nations act differently to these problems and, compared to the united states, most european countries have begun more projects for alternate, or renewable energies. In Sweden, consumption of oil has actually decreased by forty-seven per cent since 1970 (EGov Monitor). Sweden expects to become the first country in the world to be completely independent of oil by 2020 by using wood waste for biofuel (Pittsburgh Tribune Review). The World should follow Sweden’s lead towards renewable, and more environmental alternate energies to replace the commodified oil because global emmissions need to be cut by at least 50 per cent by 2050 (EGov Monitor) .

As oil prices increase, western nations need to decrease the amount used and increase the amount of alternate energies used. The price per barrell of oil is almost $200 dollars and increasing and is even much higher in Europe. The price per gallon is above 8 dollars in some places such as Amsterdam or Northern Europe. This increase of price has worried a lot of governments in Europe, especially the Netherlands and most Scandinavian countries and has resulted in research projects to try maximize the amount of biofuels and biomass as alternate energies. Denmark alone produces 1/3rd of its electricity from wind power. Biomass and hydroelectricity has become very efficient in Sweden and Norway has also begun taking more advantage of many of its rivers to increase the amounts of dams and hydroelectric production of energy.

Importing fossil fuels has resulted in huge price disportions and worse state of economies. Take the state of Hawaii, for example. Kaua’I, the most northwestern island in Hawaii, has a dependence of over 92% on non-renewable energy which has resulted in 42 cents per kW which is the highest energy rates in the United States (Green Energy President). This has sparked a huge demand by the locals to move into alternate, less expensive solutions such as renewable energy by biomass to energy, which the company Green Energy Inc. has in recent years begun building factories to enable such processes. Green Energy Inc. is also targetting wind and hydro sources.

Sweden, trying to divert from the 1.5 trillion dollars market dominated by fossil fuels (CSA), has become the leader in moving to independency of oil. The Swedish approach to get to renewable energy is very different from most of the American approaches. Sweden, as a government, usually finances and owns the corporations which deal with renewable energy through biomass and hydroelectricity whereas in America, most biomass corporations are