a note from Sweden

Hej! (this means hi in Swedish, also "bye", the Swedes are a people of few words. Why would you need more). For a portion of our time in Europe, I am based in a city in the south of Sweden called Lund. It has a interesting history. Lund was the centre of the Catholic church in Scandanavia until the Lutherans did away with all that. However the cathedral from 1100 is still standing impressively. Lund was part of Denmark along with much of the region until a Treaty and a subsequent bloody battle around 1660. It is physically close to Copenhagen, Denmark's capital about 30 minutes away by train.

The reason I am here is to learn from the Swedish energy situation. This country gets about 25% of its energy from biomass. Mostly wood left over from forestry, but also the gas from municipal waste and some straw. Wood pellets are delivered to homes in trucks the same way that heating oil is in Canada. There is a lot of district heating where wood chips are used instead of oil or natural gas to heat water.  It works and Sweden is a modern industrialized place with lots going for it, cold in the winter like Canada right. I mean they play hockey well enough to win the World Juniors. And they do it with a 1/3^rd! of the GHG emissions per capita.  How has this happened? Why is it publicly and politically legitimate here but not back home? These are the kinds of things I am learning and writing about while at Lund University, which also happens to occupy a very nice bunch of old buildings. My office is in a building connected to the historical museum which used to house the insurance records for the region apparently. It is the 5 storey building in the bottom picture.

Tomorrow I return to Marseillan. Yay! Back to Lund a few more times in the coming months.