Sweden
Is Gothenburg Sweden’s green capital?
Gothenburg once boasted the world’s largest shipyards, but faced with Japanese and Korean competition, the oil crisis and a world economic downturn, the city was brought to its knees in the 1980s, with 5 kms of empty dockland and 20 thousand unemployed people. But though shipbuilding was down, Gothenburg was not out. The City Council bought the empty shipyards for one Swedish krona – that’s 2 pence – financed new house-building, new secondary schools and linked up with Chalmers University to set up Lindholmen Science Park. It attracted the Swedish mobile phone maker, Ericsson who created a cluster of ten thousand people in other IT companies round its new HQ. This inter-dependency helped the sector survive the dot.com crash. The biggest advance though, followed the biggest setb...Read More
Heating homes without gas – the Nordic way
None of Scotland’s Nordic neighbours depends on gas for heating – but 85% of homes in Scotland do. Why the big difference? How did Nordic nations jump the green heating hurdle & should Scotland fix its energy crisis by installing district heating like Sweden and Denmark – or go electric like Norway? These were some of the big climate questions tackled by Nordic Horizons speakers, in our COP26 Verdict event, held straight after COP26 in November 2021. This 50 minute podcast of the COP 26 – Nordic Verdict event tackles all these big questions with contributions from Viktoria Raft, a former energy journalist and co-founder of the gender equality network for women in energy, Kraftkvinnorna; Tore Furevik, Professor in physical oceanography at the Geophysical Institut...Read More