Sweden wants to solve its major environmental problems so that the next generation doesn’t have to – just don’t panic when the engines go quiet as you’re landing at the airport
IMAGINE BEING on a passenger jet that has its engines idle as it glides through the air to land quietly on the runway. No dropping down in stages, no circling around in a holding pattern for half an hour, and no noisy reverse thrust when the aircraft lands, guided in safely by sophisticated computer systems.
That’s already a reality for many SAS aircraft at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport. And this pilot project, called “green approaches”, is “a blueprint for how it’s going to look like throughout Europe in the coming years”, according to Niclas Gustavsson, of the environmentally conscious Swedish Civil Aviation Authority.
Lars Anderson, of SAS, likens green approaches to cruise control on a highway, and the results show that it saves aviation fuel as well as cutting carbon emissions. “We did it first last year, and it was very silent and smooth. Nothing happened,” he told visiting journalists in Stockholm. Nothing bad, anyway . . .
SAS, which also owns Air Baltic and Spanair, aims to reduce its emissions by 50 per cent by 2020 by purchasing more fuel-efficient aircraft and cutting fuel consumption. It is also using the muscle of Star Alliance, the world’s largest airline network, negotiating with Airbus and Boeing to get cleaner, greener planes.
Operationally, SAS is also smarter. To avoid going into a holding pattern over the destination airport and therefore wasting fuel, a flight’s departure time is set based on its estimated arrival time, cleared by air-traffic control.
“So you stay on the ground until you have an optimal flight time all the way,” Anderson says. Of the six or seven air-traffic-control areas in Europe, the Nordic area aims to be the first “green” one, according to Gustavsson. By 2012, he envisages that 80 per cent of all landings at Arlanda will use green approaches. And with each aircraft saving up to 450kg of fuel, payback for airlines will be just 12 months.
Arlanda is compensating for its relatively remote location 42km north of Stockholm by giving priority to public transport, including “eco-taxis” running on biodiesel. Express trains whisk passengers into the city centre in 20 minutes, for 240 Swedish krona (€22), and there’s also a bus service, which is cheaper and takes longer.
Aviation traffic currently accounts for 45 per cent of the airport’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, with road traffic making up 53 per cent, while heating and internal ground traffic makes up the remaining 2 per cent. Although passenger numbers are up by 21 per cent since 1990, emissions have fallen by 15 per cent. The airport, which catered for more than 18 million passengers last year, has an impressive environmental programme – the most advanced of its kind in the world. And LFV, the state airport company, has already more than halved the carbon emissions from its own operations at Arlanda over the past four years.
Most unusually among world airports, it is obliged to do so under the terms of its environmental permit, which stipulates that emissions from all sources – aircraft takeoffs and landings, road traffic to and from the airport, internal vehicle traffic and space heating for buildings – must be no higher in 2011 than they were in 1990. So far, this has been partly achieved by gaining credits for investing in projects in developing countries, such as reforestation in Costa Rica. The airport’s website (arlanda.com) also offers passengers the opportunity to offset their emissions from travelling, including their flight and ground transportation to and from Arlanda.
The biggest challenge for the airport is emissions from the road traffic it generates. Although a remarkably high 45 per cent of its users take public transport, CO2 emissions from traffic have increased by 30 per cent since 1990; hence the commitment to give preferential treatment to “clean cars” at airport car parks.
Arlanda is a microcosm of Swedish society. Sweden was the first country in the world to declare its objective to become “carbon neutral” by 2050. This ambitious goal is backed up by action plans, including one to make its entire vehicle fleet – more than four million cars, at present – independent of fossil fuels by as early as 2030.
It will mean working with motor manufacturers such as Saab and Volvo to produce cars powered by environmentally certified biodiesel, ethanol, electricity or hydrogen fuel cells. Nearly a third of Stockholm’s bus fleet is already “green”, including more than 80 vehicles running on biogas from the municipal sewage treatment plant. Public transport in the city (buses, trams, metro and commuter trains) has a 40 per cent overall market share, rising to 77 per cent in the morning peak. These high levels of patronage are promoted by a 50 per cent subsidy to keep fares low and a modest congestion charge of 20 krona (€1.80) to discourage car commuters.
THE AIM FOR Stockholm’s public transport is to be carbon neutral by 2025, according to Inger Cramer, whose daughter Maria is deputy head of the Swedish embassy in Dublin. “People are very aware that we provide the most environment-friendly travel alternative, and our customer satisfaction was 77 per cent in the last survey.”
For buses, biogas from municipal waste is the Stockholm transport authority’s preferred fuel for the future; it featured in a recent advertising campaign on the buses, billed “Thanks for the Food”, which said: “Thank you for eating cannelloni and gravadlax last week, because what you flushed down the toilet now fuels this bus.”
Stockholm has been named as the European Green Capital for 2010 because of its consistent record for achieving high environmental standards, commitment to ongoing progress and ability to serve as a role model for other cities. Per-capita emissions of CO2 have fallen from 5.3 to four tonnes per annum, even in a city that’s still growing.
The number of cars in Stockholm works out at 402 per thousand people, compared to 459 per thousand in the rest of Sweden. People don’t need to drive because the city has a public-transport system that works. And even those who do are increasingly choosing “greener” cars with CO2 emissions of 120g per km or even less.
EVA SUNNERSTEDT of Stockholm City Council noted that there is no tax in Sweden on renewable fuels, to encourage the switch. “It starts slowly, with maybe 3 per cent ‘early adopters’, and then suddenly takes off. We call this the ‘ketchup effect’; when you shake the bottle first, nothing happens – and then it’s all over the plate.”
The council has a clean vehicle strategy for its own fleet, using ethanol that’s derived half-and-half from Brazilian sugar cane and Swedish wood-pulp residue. It has also taken the trouble to establish that the sugar cane-based ethanol comes from farms in the south of Brazil and thus represents no threat to the Amazon rainforest.
In a further boost to the take-up of renewables, the Swedish government is considering the imposition of an extra tax on standard cars, with no tax on green cars for five years. It is also planning a massive expansion in wind energy for electricity generation, under a Climate and Energy Bill currently before the Riksdag (parliament).
The government has decided to retain the nuclear component of Sweden’s energy mix and even to replace the country’s existing 10 reactors, which supply roughly half of its electricity. But there is one important caveat: no public money will be invested in the nuclear industry – all of it will have to come from the private sector.
The overall objective of Sweden’s environmental policy, adopted 10 years ago, is both starkly simple and challenging – “to hand over to the next generation a society in which the major environmental problems have been solved”. No other country in Europe, or the world, has made such a breathtaking commitment on the environment.
But the Swedes are different. There is 100 per cent awareness of climate change, according to the most recent survey of public opinion by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. It also found that 71 per cent see it as “very important” that Sweden take action, and 58 per cent say they are willing to pay higher taxes on all fossil fuels.
“In such a highly taxed country, this makes our finance minister very happy,” says Jessica Cederberg-Wodmar, who heads the EPA’s 105-strong climate change department. As a result, there is a strong mandate – even in the midst of an economic recession – for Sweden’s politicians to continue taking a leading role on the issue.