Helby 1998 Renewable Energy Sweden

Helby (1998) Renewable Energy Projects in Sweden READ MORE: district heating; Looks like good report, though outdated. Sections on policy context, support for renewables (tax relief, investment support), prevailing schemes for ownership and finance Sweden has low energy use per person compared to OECD. Electricity mainly hydro and nuclear. Most emissions come from cars. Heating is efficient and buildings are well-insulated. When this report written (1998), decisions on whether to phase out nuclear had been made and overturned several times. Two alternatives: more natural gas or efficiency/renewables. Latter had more political support. Still, Sweden used to cheap surplus of power. More effort put into research than implementation of renewables, though country already uses a lot of hydro and biomass (including wood, industrial waste – see p.6) for heating and industrial apps. Government support: direct investment subsidies for renewables; support for group procurement to get better prices and build market; subsidies for new, retrofitted, and converted CHP plants based on biofuels; reduction for connection of boilers to district heating grids if reduce CO2; subsidies for stoves or furnaces to reduce use of electric heating; subsidy for small-scale hydro plants; small budget for wind subsidies; subsidies for solar ended in 1996; one bank offers soft loans to green investment by sm and med business, guaranteed by Euro Investment Fund; Taxes on emissions of CO2, Sox, Nox amt of energy (see table on p11) – different in different parts of country, industries partially exempt; no CO2 tax on electric power production, since fear that it would move abroad – but no advantage in this case for renewables that are CO2 free; end user tax on energy refunded to wind power producers; accelerated depreciation for wind turbines; subsidy in form of income tax on labor costs for home renewable energy installations; Sources of finance – mostly traditional: large utilities with high credit ratings can get low interest financing; private persons for home or business – alternative to other forms of savings such as bonds; private, unsecured loans from banks for household investments with higher interest rate than utilities get; Ownership and tax structures for household, small business,: Wind turbines often owned by real-estate communes, consumer co-ops, companies limited by shares – financed by savings and bank loans; Housing assn ownership of larger scale bioenergy and solar heating – financed by mortgage-backed loans; DID NOT READ ALL OF THIS SECTION, BUT INCLUDES USEFUL DETAIL ON COMMON OWNERSHIP STRUCTURES OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF RENEWABLES AND TAXATION