Saturday, December 11, 2010

Swedish Town Uses Waste Instead of Fossil Fuels for Most Public Energy Consumption

The New York Times has this article to brighten the Saturday morning news for everyone who - like this blogger - believes that there is a strong need to use less oil and coal: Link. By converting all of its kitchen waste into biogas and using this gas to heat homes as well as in public transport, the town has not only reduced public consumption of oil and coal to almost zero, it has also managed to slash its energy bills per year by almost half.

Cities with vastly larger populations - and there are many such around the world - could take note of this very successful experiment. More people means more kitchen waste and therefore more raw material to work with in order to extract biogas. Use the Terrabon Link catalytic system to convert sewage into fuel or use an alternative method that extracts gas from sewage, or an algae based system, and there is a strong possibility that far larger cities could be weaned off oil and coal. An ambitious way forward, no doubt, but the good people of Kristianstad started to work on a fossil fuel free future some years ago and successfully got there. It is time the rest of the world learns from their pioneering effort.

2 comments:

Kulasekaran said...

Excellent news Mehul. It is beyond my comprehension why towns could not adopt such technologies which save them money and cut down their reliance on fossil fuels.

mehulkamdar said...

Well, let us hope that in the spirit of competition, TN will attempt this in Chennai at first and then move to smaller cities like Coimbatore, Madurai, Thanjavur etc and that other states will follow. The fierce political competition in India means that politicians will now have to perform in order to get re-elected. Good for everyone that way!