Swedish bioenergy sector facing its Waterloo

The municipality of Kiruna is situated 200km north of the Arctic circle and 1,200km from Stockholm. It has 20,000 inhabitants that are served by one large bioenergy power plant. It requires a steady stream of waste to feed its insatiable furnace that provides crucial heating for thousands of homes during the six months of year when snow covers the ground.

The amount of locally produced waste is limited and the town of Kiruna has had to resort to import household waste from Norway. Up to 20 truckloads of garbage a day is transported from the city of Narvik by the Atlantic coast, located some 180km from Kiruna, across the mountain range that divides the Scandinavian peninsula.

But the exported household waste in northern Norway is now also in short supply. Recently, the Norwegian waste management company that has the contract to supply Kiruna with household waste has had to start to ship in waste from Holland to top up the dwindling Norwegian waste mountain.

In the first instance 10,000 tonnes which equals 600 truckloads of household waste is now transported by sea from Holland to Narvik a distance of 2,000km and on to Kiruna by road to provide the necessary heating for the inhabitants of this Arctic mining town.

This shortage of locally produced household waste is not a phenomenon restricted to the Arctic. Gothenburg the second largest town in Sweden is heating a large part of its households with hot water derived from burning of household waste. The waste and recycling company Renova, who supplies the waste for Gothenburg Energy, is this year importing 40,000 tonnes of waste from Norway and Holland to be shipped in by boat and truck.

There is a lively discussion in Swedish media on the topic of importing rubbish and the environmental aspects of transporting waste long distances to waste handling facilities equipped to convert the waste into useful energy.

It seems clear that countries such as the Netherlands and Norway are not willing to invest in the infrastructure for the destruction of waste but rather rely on shipping the waste to Sweden.

The Swedish Government’s Department of the Environment has said that they can’t restrict the import of garbage into Sweden since it would be seen as a barrier to international trade by the EU.

It is an interesting world we are living in when refuse is suddenly a tradable commodity. I wonder when the first markets for trade in real junk will open up in London or New York?

It seems to be a case of one Dutchman’s trash is another European’s treasure.