{news} Great article on a City going Green

[MaryAnne Davis]

courant.com/news/nationworld/chi-sweden-carbonfree_goeringmar03,0,3402661.story

Courant.com

Going green: Entire Swedish city switches to biofuels to become environmentally friendly

Industrial community makes change with a minimum of cost, pain

By Laurie Goering

Tribune correspondent

March 3, 2009


KALMAR, Sweden — Though a fraction of Chicago's size, this industrial city in southeast Sweden has plenty of similarities with it, including a long, snowy winter and a football team the town's crazy about.

One thing is dramatically different about Kalmar, however: It is on the verge of eliminating the use of fossil fuels, for good, and with minimal effect on its standard of living.

The city of 60,000—and its surrounding 12-town region, with a quarter-million people—has traded in most of its oil, gas and electric furnaces for community "district heat," produced at plants that burn sawdust and wood waste left by timber companies. Hydropower, nuclear power and windmills now provide more than 90 percent of the region's electricity. 

Kalmar's publicly owned cars and buses—and a growing share of its private and business vehicles—run on biogas made from waste wood and chicken manure, or an 85 percent ethanol blend from Brazil.