Before Wind and Hydro: The building blocks of a sustainable nation

Scandinavia could be considered one of the leaders in sustainable and environmentally friendly business practice and technology development, through the examples outlined in the previous green market article and to be described through product in the next article. However, how did they get to where they are now?

No happy accident

The rise of green and sustainable culture in the Scandinavian region was no accident. In fact, even before the technology existed, the mindset of sustainable practice was already there. Sweden’s history is a good example of how the building blocks to sustainability were present for many decades before it became a top-of-mind issue. It all started in 1973, with the OPEC-fueled oil crisis. This event, an oil embargo by OPEC on all nations that would support Israel in its conflict with Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, provided a dire lesson to the government of Sweden on nonrenewable commodity-based energy. This lesson was enough to prompt the nation into looking into not only alternative energy sources, but ways to conserve energy as well.

Some of the simplest yet most effective practices were in city and home planning. Houses were built with windows only facing the south, east, or west. A certain style of wall insulation for wooden homes had already been in use since the turn of the century. In addition, in 1975 a new Code of Building practice was established that helped to ensure houses used energy as efficiently as possible.

The first in a new energy legacy

The first real renewable energy source Sweden turned to was Solar. Solar was used to varying degrees of success, due to the countries northern locale. Solar panels were first applied to buildings to assist in the heating of water in the individual building. But as time went on, solar was utilized in larger grids, and to cut down on the amount of non-renewable fuel needed to run buildings. This later became subsumed by wind and hydroelectric power, which works better in the low solar-radiation climate of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Its clear to see that Sweden, and Scandinavia have been in the renewable frame of mind for a long time in coming.