How Did Sweden Capitalise on a Storm?

It’s rare that we think of storms as good things. Characterised by thunder, gale force winds and of course, dramatic flashes of lightning, they’re a time to hunker down indoors and be thankful you have a roof over your head. However, the recent violence of Storm Urd has proved to be a beneficial thing for Sweden’s energy economy and for its people in general.

As the ferocious tempest raged over Christmas and the days that followed, Swedish wind farms were able to set a new record for power generated – even outstripping nuclear power plants in the process.

The perfect storm

Scandinavia perhaps doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to dealing with inclement weather conditions – after all, it wasn’t so long ago that volcanic ash clouds played havoc with Iceland and its aeronautic infrastructure. However, Storm Urd has proved to be more a boon than a bane, breaking records for the renewable energy industry.

Across the few days for which the storm raged, the country generated almost 5.7 million kWh of energy from its numerous wind farms, which broke the previous record (set at roughly the same time last year) by over half a million kWh. That was enough to supply as much as 26% of the country’s energy needs, more than ever before from wind power.

“The extremely windy weather in the past few days meant that wind power produced almost as much as six nuclear power plants,” explained Anders Engqvist, head of renewable energy company Bixia. “Never before has Swedish wind power produced that much.”

The abundance of wind power not only curbed the harmful emissions of greenhouse gases that are a by-product of less clean forms of power generation, but also served to drive down energy prices. This windfall was felt not only by Swedish residents, but also home and business owners in neighbouring Denmark and Finland, too.

An example to follow

Though they were aided in no small part by Mother Nature, Sweden have clearly recognised that wind energy is key to the future of renewable power and by manufacturing such a large number of wind farms, they created the conditions for their renewable economy to flourish.

They’re also a leading light in other areas of environmentalism, too. Compared to our recycling practices in the UK, the Swedes are streets ahead of us, with only 1% of their refuse ending up in landfills. Compare that to the 56% of waste that is not recycled in the British Isles and it’s clear that we have a lot of catching up to do.

 In fact, Sweden is so adept at recycling that it has begun to import waste from other countries (including our own), just to have enough material to keep their recycling plants busy. Having recognised the value of waste materials as fuel feedstock, the Swedes now turn roughly half of all of their rubbish into energy to heat homes across the country. It’s perhaps something we – and other nations around the world – would do well to emulate.