Sustainable Sweden
A Sustainable Study
As it seems I am continually fortunate and lucky to find myself traveling again, I’ve devoted this section of my website as a compilation of my studies on Sweden’s Sustainability Initiatives. This trip is possible thanks to a generous grant I won from the US Department of State and the Swedish Institute’s 2010 Swedish-American Exchange Fund, which was set up in 1976 as a two-hundred year birthday gift to the United Stated from Sweden. My study will focus on the innovation, culture, and feasibility of one of the world’s most influential sustainable systems.
I’ll be capturing my experiences here in various media in hopes of relaying a message of possibility back to my fellow Americans. The underlying objective is to create a simple and clairvoyant proposal for a more sustainable lifestyle by developing a case study of Sweden’s journey to a sustainable future.
I’ll be traveling around the country talking with industry leaders and progressive minds in Stockholm, Goteborg, Vaxjo, Karlskrona, and Malmo to hopefully develop a more sustainable America. As always, I am open to your comments and feedback via my blog or e-mail (david.a.loomis @ gmail.com) from any like-minded, opposed, or just curious people and groups. You can follow my daily activity via twitter as well! Thanks for your interest.
Thankfully, after only a quick layover in London while holding my breath waiting for an all-clear on the volanic ash cloud, I made it to Stockholm. I stopped in to say hi and thank you to the gracious staff of the Swedish Institute, and I was off to my first site visit at Hammarby Sjostad, which is an urban redevelopment project that was completed in a post-industrial section of Stockholm.
Gullholmen, Sverige
I drove over to the west coast of Sweden to check out the Lysekil Wave Farm started by Uppsala University. Gullholmen is one of Sweden’s oldest fishing villages, and is also the closest village to the wave farm. Even though it is only a few kilometers from shore we couldn’t see any visual impact from the farm except an antenna on one of the islands and the power cable coming ashore. The locals called John, the water taxi driver, to take us out to the site, but he was driving to Goteborg and most of the residents hadn’t moved in for the summer season yet, but it was still a great experience!
BioGas: Trendy Fuel
BioGas can be a confusing term, and it is quickly finding its way into everyday conversations. BioGas, or more correctly biomethane, is fuel that is clarified out of biowaste, and mixed with natural gas and used in place of gasoline and diesel. The region surrounding Gothenburg has systematically brought fueling stations and thousands of vehciles to the roads. The more interesting part of this experiment is its entrance into a competitive economy, the concept is becoming so popular that demand is now supporting competing fueling stations and vehicle designs…
Inspirational Cities: The Effects of Small Concepts
While in Sweden I had the unique opportunity to see how cities change from concepts and sketches to green neighorhoods all the way to the incarnate and aptly named “greenest city in europe.” Within each of these seemingly daunting and impressive changes, lies the secret to their success; simple and small concepts which can take root in even the smallest of communities…
Education: Making the first step
My visits proved to have one resonanting theme; education. Everyone I talked to emphasized the most important step is the first step, and the first step is educating the people. I was taught from an early age to make educated decisions, to think critically about how my actions will affect others. Typically this thought precludes anecdotes of life-changing poor decisions, but here it prefaces a myriad of successes from raising neighborhood awareness to developing one of the fastest growing graduate school sustainability programs in the world…
Back Home, now Where?
Returning from any trip is bittersweet, but I found myself amped up and ready to thrust sustainability and change into the mindsets of my fellow Americans. However, I realized this is not a battle for one person, it is a journey that needs to be taken over time with patience and allowed to evolve. I hesitated on a basic but fundamental hole in the Swedish Sustainability Model; the lack of suburbs. Argueably the most American contribution to structured living is missing in Sweden, However, I realized America’s suburbs may be an even better place for sustainability to flourish…
