Swedish Press Sample Nov 2016 Vol 87:09

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Green wheels: A step closer to a fossil-free Sweden

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November 2016 Vol 87:09 $4.95

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CONTENTS ( November 2016 ) 4 Letters to the Editor

5 From the Editor’s Desk

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Swedish Headlines Headline News – Swedish Democrats vs Sweden News at a Glance Swedes in the News

Business 8 Business News 9 Company File: Midsummer AB Feature 10 Sweden electrifies public transit

Global Swedes 16 Putting Sweden on the Map – Abroad: Charles Gagnon

Lifestyle 18 Top Sju 19 Health: For the love of Yoga Swedish Press Connect 20 SWEA Road to Community 21 MIG Talks –Migration handlar om mig

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Gothenburg’s first fully electric bus in service since June 2015. Photo: Volvo Buses

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Interview 12 Göran Finnveden – KTH professor shares thoughts on sustainability

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Heritage 14 Lär Dig Svenska 15 Påven Franciskus besöker Lund

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Cover image: Image of a Volvo Electric Concept Bus embedded in a 1939 graphic poster.

Photo: Volvo Bus Corporation.

NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 10

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Sweden Electrifies Public Transit

By Marcus Andersson

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he days of the diesel-powered city bus are numbered. Over the past decade, major cities around the world have been evaluating the technology necessary to introduce fully electric vehicles into their fleets, and Sweden is at the forefront of this progressive evolution. Both the Swedish government and major corporations like Volvo are passionately committed to a greener future for the transport industry, with the goal of completely eradicating fossil fuel use by 2030. Stockholm’s first electric hybrid line 73 launched on March 16, 2015, and Gothenburg’s Route 55 followed only three months later on June 15, 2015. Continuing the trend, Södertälje inaugurated its electric service this summer, which also features Sweden’s first application of wireless recharging technology.

Electric buses operate free from emissions and noise, using battery to power their engines as opposed to fuel.

Bus batteries are charged at night in a depot, and then charged at power stations along their route during the day.

A recharge only takes six minutes, and the batteries in Volvo-manufactured vehicles have an operational life of at least seven years, after which point they can be reused for less demanding

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applications. Unlike their electric predecessors that required wire infrastructure, Sweden’s new fleet is much more cost effective and only demands small recharging stations. Recharging points along the route allow manufacturers to employ smaller batteries, meaning less weight and increased passenger capacity.

Zara Larsson performed new songs during the Silent Bus Sessions campaign on Gothenburg’s electric bus Route 55 in 2015. © Volvo Bus Corp.

Södertälje’s new line is unique in Sweden’s electric bus arsenal in that it uses a wireless system to recharge its batteries. One of the bus stops along the route is designed to function as a power station through inductive charging. What this means is that a panel underground generates energy, and a receiver under the bus pulls electricity wirelessly to charge the battery. The process only takes six minutes and provides enough power for the bus to complete its route.

If Sweden is able to reach its 2030 goal, citizens would enjoy noticeable

The bus can be wirelessly charged at one of its stops via a charging station located under the road surface (1). A receiver, mounted in the bus floor, absorbs electric energy (2) and charges the battery (3).

benefits in the immediate future. Volvo claims that electric buses reduce energy consumption by 60-80%, and lowers carbon dioxide emissions by 75-90%. Sweden has the privilege of generating clean electricity from wind and hydro, but even less fortunate nations that depend on “dirty” energy would still improve environmental conditions by making the switch to electric buses. In addition to cleaning up the atmosphere, electric buses also reduce city clamour. In Gothenburg, a city in which 7 of 10 citizens complain about traffic noise, silent electric buses are an important step toward improving the quality of urban life.

Emission-free buses would also affect future city planning, as bus stops would no longer need to be stationed outdoors. Gothenburg’s Energy CEO Lotta Brändström says that “in the past, urban planning focused on the car,” but now city planners can design structures that accommodate buses indoors.

Electric buses could also run much later time tables in residential areas, since there would be less vehicle noise disturbances to consider. Innovators like Niklas Gustafsson, head of sustainability at Volvo, see that the near future is full of possibilities: “How can the construction of cities look?” he asks, and “what type of streets, what type of

buildings will exist in a future when buses in fact drive more or less indoors?”

Volvo is indeed a pioneer in the production of electric buses. The company has taken the bold stance to cease production of its biogas model, stating that they don’t want to take the middle ground. According to Volvo CEO Håkan Agnevall, the company has no “plan B”: “We will of course miss a number of orders in Sweden and Norway by not selling biogas buses.

But we also see a rapid opinion shift in the political landscape in moving toward electricity. For the same amount of gas that fuels a gas bus you can run three electric buses.”

In addition to transforming Sweden’s public transit, Volvo is also providing their buses worldwide, having sold over 2,300 hybrid buses to over twenty countries. Earlier this year, for example, the Indian government put Volvo hybrid buses into service in the city of Navi Mumbai, which both parties hope will be the beginning of a more gradual evolution toward total electrification.

Though the hybrids aren’t as environmentally friendly as the wireless electric buses in Södertälje, the vehicles still offer a 39 % lower emission rate than that of regular diesel buses. In North America, Nova Bus, a Montreal-based Volvo company, is working to initiate

electric bus programs in Canada, beginning with Montreal in Q1 of 2017.

Hamburg and Luxembourg are two other prominent cities on the forefront of the Volvo electrification trend.

Fortunately, there are other companies involved in the enterprise of sustainable public transport in Sweden and elsewhere. Umeå has partnered with Hybricon to create an electric bus fleet uniquely designed to handle the extreme conditions of northern Sweden, for instance.

Furthermore, the Chinese manufacturer BYD provides many of London’s electric hybrids and recently created the first fully electric double decker.

London, in fact, aspires to be emission free as soon as 2020.

The 100% electric Nova LFSe will be launched in Montreal in 2017. Photo: Nova Bus

There are very few drawbacks to electric buses compared to the obvious benefits. One issue that Swedish cities are hoping to solve is the danger of silent traffic. Though no incidents have yet occurred, the danger is that passengers are less likely to be alerted of oncoming bus traffic without accompanying noise. Besides this minor concern, electric buses are a radical improvement from their gas guzzling ancestors. By 2030, Sweden’s streets will be quieter, the air will be cleaner, and passengers won’t have to freeze at outdoor bus stops when the winter sets in.

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KTH Professor shares thoughts on sustainability

By Sofie Kinnefors

Sustainable development is a concept most people have heard of. The objective is that human life shall continue on a planet with limited resources.

Swedish Press spoke to Göran Finnveden, Professor of Environmental Strategic Analysis and Vice-president for sustainable development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, about challenges to sustainable development, goals and possible solutions.

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W I T H

G Ö R A N

Please tell us a little about your background.

I grew up in Stockholm. I earned a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from KTH, but also studied some Philosophy, Policy and Environmental Economics. Different subjects make you think in different ways. Therefore, it is valuable to study subjects in different areas to better understand how other people reason. After my graduation I worked for IVL, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, for several years before earning a PhD in Natural Resources Management at Stockholm University.

After that I worked for the Swedish Defense Research Agency. We had a lot of cooperation with KTH, where I became an Associate Professor in Industrial Ecology in 2003. In 2004 we moved our research group to KTH and started the Center for Environmental Strategic Analysis, which is now an integrated part of KTH’s research and education.

Please tell us about your positions as Professor of Environmental Strategic Analysis and Vice-president for sustainable development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

I came back to KTH in 2004 and became a full professor in 2007. In that role, I primarily lead and conduct research while also supervising PhD students. Some of our current projects include: • The role of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) for sustainable development. Digitalization is changing the world and the ICT development can be both an opportunity and a challenge in reaching a sustainable development. ICT products and

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services can support more sustainable development, for example by making production processes and use of other products and services more efficient.

ICT can also make it possible to reach out with information and services to different parts of the world where opportunities are limited. But ICT products also have environmental impacts when they are produced and used, and these should be minimized.

• Beyond GDP growth – Scenarios for a sustainable built environment. In most planning and policy processes, continued economic growth is often taken for granted. But what happens if the economic growth slows down?

Is it possible to reach a sustainable development? These are questions we study in this project.

• Environmental impacts from Swedish consumption occur in Sweden but also in other countries where the products are produced. In the project PRINCE (Policy relevant indicators for national consumption and the environment) we develop tools and indicators for measuring this.

• In different types of planning processes, environmental assessments should be made. In this project we analyze to what extent this is happening, what influence the environmental assessments have on the planning process, and how it can be further developed.

In 2011 I was appointed vicepresident for sustainable development.

In this role I work with the integration of sustainable development in education, research and collaboration across the whole university. Our goal is that sustainable development should be integrated in all education programs. We also want to increase

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KTH Campus. Photo: Jann Lipka/KTH

KTH’s research for sustainable development. I also work closely with our environmental manager who is responsible for developing our environmental management system.

What does sustainability mean to you?

Last year, the countries of the world agreed on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. It includes 17 sustainable development goals. For me, these goals define sustainable development. They describe what the world wants to achieve, and what all countries have agreed upon. The goals cover many different aspects such as the eradication of poverty, sustainable agriculture, water issues and climate change. Together they provide a holistic definition of sustainable development.

Why has sustainability come about?

The world is facing several challenges; climate change is threatening the stability of the globe, approximately 1 billion people are undernourished, water is becoming more scarce and national and international conflicts are taking place. These and many other challenges are interlinked and cannot be solved in isolation. Sustainable development is therefore needed so that the needs for development can be met while staying within environmental limits.

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G Ö R A N

Your main research interest is the use and development of life cycle assessment and other sustainability assessment tools. Please elaborate.

In order to move towards a more sustainable society, we need tools to assess different options and decision consequences. My research focus is on developing such tools. I have especially worked with life-cycle assessment, which is a method for assessing the environmental impacts of a product or a service from “cradle to grave”, i.e. from production of raw materials, via production and use phases to waste management. The life cycle perspective is important to avoid problem-shifting, where one problem is solved by moving it to another area.

I have also worked with other methods such as strategic environmental assessment, cost-benefit analysis and social life cycle assessment.

You also work with environmental policy. In which areas?

One example is transportation policy.

Because of climate change, the use of fossil fuels for transportation needs to decrease significantly. This must happen within a short time period.

Important questions include what kind of policies can support this transition.

This also relates to to the nature and types of infrastructure needed to support this transition.

Another area is waste management.

Interesting questions include policies and strategies to increase recycling and minimization of waste.

Who inspires you in your work?

My wife, colleagues and students.

Sweden came out on top in a recent

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ranking of 60 countries in the Global Green Economy Index (2014) measuring national performance in green economy by consulting firm Dual Citizen Inc. Sweden’s first place reflects its ongoing commitment to climate change, mitigation and sustainability policies and practices. Why are Swedes so good at being sustainable?

I think our closeness to nature makes it evident that our way of life is dependent on functioning ecosystems.

We get food, water, materials, energy, fresh air, and all the things we need from our ecosystems. They must therefore continue to function if our way of life is to be sustained.

KTH Campus. Photo: KTH

How can I become more sustainable?

People play different roles as citizens, consumers, friends, family members, employees and students. We can contribute to sustainability through all these roles. As citizens we can engage, ask questions and vote for representatives who can contribute to a more sustainable society. As consumers we can choose not to consume or choose products and services with lower negative impacts. In our jobs we can influence the things we do and as students we can prepare ourselves for future work, as well as demand that schools give us the necessary tools to succeed.

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