It's strange they use the term “unimaginable” to describe a time barely one human lifespan ago. Unimaginable better describes the notion of continued material growth and increasing rate of drawdown on a clearly finite resource base.

The individual countries may well be virtuous, but once they get together in the EU it all goes downhill into a mess of deals, backbiting, lies and pork barrel politics.

I'm not saying the corruption enriches the individual, but the gap between how its supposed to work and what actually happens could swallow the grand canyon. If you want to see the EU in miniature, watch the eurovision song contest.

The more power and money that is kept away from that lot, the more progress will be achieved.

Your ignorant anti-EU rants are tiresome. There are actually lots of arguments to criticize the EU institutions or the French farmers, but you don't provide a single one.

Or at least simply pay the farmers subsidies which are *not* driven by the amount they produce.

You can preserve the rural countryside, without making Africa pay a disproportionate price for your silly agricultural policies.

(one small problem, of course. If we produce less food locally, we *import* more from further away

*however*

I am reasonably persuaded that an efficient food market (in the sense of non-distorted) is the place to start for creating a low energy food market.

Local Food is a coming wave in the developed world (already we shop in Farmer's Markets in London) and I don't think the EU's crazy agricultural policies help it much).

The absence of nuclear power in the document is like a silent scream. These people had 15 years of post-Kyoto experince to examine - with the results being close to nil. Let's look at the EU green energy champions compared to 1990 (numbers from memory):
1) Germany - reducing CO2 emission by 10%. But due to closure of East Germany industries. Past 5 years - reduction of 0.2%.
2) Denmark - increasing emissions by 6%.
3) Spain - increasing emissions by 20%. Currently the worst offender of the Kyoto treaty in EU.
4) UK - reduction of 5%. By replacing coal with NG. And we know where UK NG is headed to...

Now if they only read 1)-4) and put some thought on them... These people don't learn - they insist on applying failed policies to almost hopeless and now increasingly deteorating situation. And these are 15 years we are talking about... Short of a coordinated effort to build nukes worldwide the future will spell as C-O-A-L. Now by attatching the "Clean" boondoggle to it, the EU commission just gave green light to the brave new coal era... and I am simply stunned by the hypocricy of what they are doing now.

I expect that very soon Russia will be overwhelmed and Algeria will not to be enough.

EU has been playing tough with Russia for a long time trying to make it open its energy market for foreign investments. This is absolutely unacceptable for Russia, which is determined to benefit from its strategical position. Neither side seems to be willing a compromise, but I blame mostly the EU which is unable to accept the reality - which is that Russia is getting to the position of superpower and must be treated at least as equal. If you want its energy you must offer something in return - ideologically backed calls for "free market" etc. will not work. Don't try to treat Russia like Nigeria, damn it.

The result of this stallmate is that russian energy sector remains underinvested, with potentially disastrous consequences for EU in the longer run - though it plays well for the long-term Russia's self-interest. The EU is growing impatient, totally unable to accept the reality of loss of control and continuing its pathetic bullying attempts. I wonder when will these people wake up?

Whatever the background picture, this path taken is leading to fierce confrontantion with the Russian state. EU is unable to introduce structural conservation measures, making cosmetic efforts to develop alternatives, not willing to treat Russia as equal, what the hell do they expect as a result? Like I said - they are idiots. Paper tigers, thinking they make the reality what they want it to be from their warm Brussels cabinets.

Re Grid in northern Europe.
see this nice ABB presentation.
http://www.abb.com/cawp/gad02181/09264cb2d17c4cc6c1256d8800402659.aspx
I am sure the Learned TOD - Redin and others can give much more detail.
and the European Electricity producers organisation EUrelectric has a wealth of information on the topic.
here: http://public.eurelectric.org/Content/Default.asp?PageID=505
kind regards/And1

The first problem in Sweden is getting more capacity built, we currently have no "excess" to export.
We still have a political deadlock regarding nuclear power but it has changed from "it should be dismantled" to "uprating of powerplants and some new uranium mines is ok".

Power producers acting as oligopols, electricity export and side effects from CO2 certificate trading has given the Swedish heavy industry higher electricity prices. Ordinary people have much higher electricity prices due to much higher taxation on top of that. Cheap electricity is no longer the competetive advantage it once where and manny companies now discover that they squandered the advantage by inefficient processes, inefficent ventilation, leaking compressed air systems etc. This is being adressed but I could happen faster.

Much of the power generation, mostly hydro power, were owned by heavy industry that traditionally used hydro power from pre electricity times and then built much of the new dams when HV AC made it possible to transfer electricity over long distances. When the electricity market were deregulated manny of these companies bought the free market propaganda and sold their hydro powerplants cheaply in anticipation of them being run by competent competing specialists to let them concentrate on their core markets of pulp, steel, etc. This backfired when the new electricity market were withouth real competition.

Now have 32 of these heavy industry companies formed a new cooperation organization Basel to build new owned electricity production to get back to the old times and how it is run today in Finland. They have recently pledged that they have 70-100 billion SEK, $10-13 billion to build at least two new large nuclear powerplants, they are currently trying to find electricity to import(!), building some windpower and everything elese they can think of but the big prize is to get some reliable 24 TWh for the next 60 years. I find it incredibly stupid to not let them build this ASAP, I think most other countries would kill for having such an initative.

The big oligopol companies seems to be tolerated as long as they invest a lot of their enourmous profits. They do invest quite a lot, there is a cablification program underway for most of the rural grid to make it storm proof and as a side effect return manny km2 of forest to normal production. There are also reinvestments and investments in the 130kV district grid, manny hydro powerplants are being renovated and having their dams strenghtened and they invest in district heating and a fair number of combined heat and power district heating plants and upratings of the current nuclear powerplants.

Unfortunately there also is an old political push to get them to invest massively in wind power and that is not as economical as nuclear, hydro and using the district heating cogeneration potential. And one of the largest of these comopanies Vattenfall is 100% state owned making this state of affairs fairly good for our government budget. It is as if the largest US oil company where delivering its profits to the federal budget, katching!

If we build combined heat and power plants that mostly burn biomass and utilizes all of the large and medium sized district heating nets in Sweden we could add about 13 TWh of production. The current production is around 7 TWh. Its very good for us since it would be maximal when the weather is cold and a lot of electricity is used for heating. Continuing with round numbers we could have another about 10 TWh if the fuel source is natural gas.

There are plans for around 10 TWh of wind power, this is a very uncertain number. The current production is close to 1 TWh. Myself I would rather build less expensive nuclear power instead of the very large wind power installations and export ballance power to the countries that build more wind power then they can ballance on their own.

There is an unused potential for more hydro power in the streams and rivers that already are exploited. The current production is between 50-75 TWh depending on rainfall. Another 3 TWh is probably possible by improving old installations and 5-11 TWh as infill in old exploted streams. If we sacrificed all of the untouched rivers it would give 12 TWh but that would get me to demonstrate against the buildout and I am a hard line pro technology geek. ;-)

We have one closed down and still conserved nuclear powerplant Barsebäck with two old BWR reactors. Its built close to Denmark and its coluse has much to do with Danish complaints. After its closure they made billions exporting coal power, oh well. My own crazy idea is that our governmnet who paid Eon for the capital and production loss should force ownership of it and then give it away to the Danes provided they renovate and run it. That should give 2 x 4 TWh of CO2 free power for about 20 years.

Barsebäck is very strategely placed in our grid and the greens have a point of it being an old planty close to large cities. It would be better to tear down the old plants and build 2-3 modern arliner crash proof EPR:s instead. 2-3 x 12 TWh. It is probably reasonable to lay a couple more 400 kV AC cabels to eastern Denmark, a HVDV link between eastern and Western Denmark is already planned and additional 400 kV high tension lines would go over farmland with close to zero impact on farming. This could replace all of the condencing coal power in Denmark and free up grid capacity to the hydro power in northern Sweden for ballancing wind power in Denmark and Germany. A massive enviromental win and a massive economical win for Sweden, a profit that could be shared with Denmark by Danish investment and ownership in the plant.

With the same priciple for the south east coast could an additional 12 TWh reactor be sited at Oskarshamn, and 1-2 in for instance the Karlshamn area and most of the grid strenghtening would be alongside old powerline corridors and HVDC cabels in the sea to Germany and Poland. But this only makes sense if they have an intrest in importing nuclear power instead of having it run locally, I hope having solved the waste issue and having all authorities in place compared with Poland is of significant value.

The same reasoning could be applied to Norway but they ought to have an enourmous savings potential from decades of dirt cheap hydro electricity and if they overcome som mostly aesthetic enviromental issues they could build much more hydro power. The grid to Norway seems to be weak with few link between southern Norway and Sweden making the powerline investments large and intrusive.

For medium sized reactors we have a potential for combined heat and power production in the urban areas in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö and perhaps also in the largest refinery close to Lysekil. But this will only become politically possible when we get forest biomass scarcity wich will follow when high oilprices make forest biomass to fuel profitable. It would be kind of ironic if we could have a nuclear powered refinery in a close to zero oil country in 20-30 years. But it would be a high tech trade income generator and an extra energy security. It would follow our old trade and industry tradition and our acceptance of foreign owned investments, the refinery is saudi owned, massively profitable and its owner shows his fondness of us by investing in Sweden. But this is only a personal vision from thinking about synergies.

I have not counted the ongoing upratings of the 10 present nuclear reactors, if I remember right it is about 7 TWh.

If I sum this up we could with streamlined processes and if people are serious with making the investments have about 50 TWh online within about 15 years. It would require a willingness for our neighbours to import power and a political concensus of getting out of the way for the investments.

I would realy, realy like to see this happen. And it should be done in parallell with a continued build out of ground source heat pumps
past the present >300 000, massive installation of plug-in hybrid and EV charging outlets, more electrified railways and a natural gas and biogas pipeline grid and so on.

Therin lies a problem, all of these investments use massive ammounts of concrete, steel and so on and lots and lots of workhours. A fair part of our economy is already about building heavy long term infrastructure but more of it needs to be invested in that and that will limit some other areas in our economy.
Perhaps people could buy shares and bonds in these investments shifting more of the economy from short term spending to long term dividends? A majority of small house owners already has this thinking in their own house investments. We have a large increase in lending for spending but the banking system dont seem to have become perverted.

I think we should make this gamble in Sweden and act like peak oil is about now. If it is incorrect and the peak is in the medium term future we will take some beating in the competition but most of the investment will still be there a generation later and then become extremely profitable. And in the meantime the CO2 savings will be huge and we will continue developing a nice to live in post peak oil logistics and building structure and will thus be able to carry on our way of living in the post peak oil times and post fossil fuel times.