This morning the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) had invited representatives from five Nordic countries to reveal why they've been so successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, implementing renewable power generation and taking energy efficiency measures. It was obvious that the Nordic countries felt very good about their frontrunner reputation, and rightly so. Why couldn't the US follow suit? This question wasn't really answered. I think there are quite some barriers to take before the US can go down the same route.
There seem to be three factors that enabled the Nordic countries to be so progressive. The first is abundant renewable energy resources. Norway is blessed with a lot of hydropower potential and has been getting its power from this carbon-free energy source since long. Norway's oil and gas are a an 'extra'; most of it is exported. For Norway energy is not a challenge, it's a source of income, said Fridtjof Unander of the Norwegian Resaerch Council. In Iceland there's abundant geothermal power available at low prices. Sweden also has quite a lot of hydropower and following the energy crises of 1973 it built nuclear power plants, making its power supply practically independent of fossil fuel. In addition, it has extensive woods, which provide a renewable resource for biomass when sustainably managed. The second factor is historically high energy prices. As Jes Christensen of the Danish Board of District Heating (DBDH) mentioned, Denmark has kept its energy prices for households high when prices declined after the oil crisis and they don't regret it. The country is used to high energy prices and with high energy prices energy efficiency measures and alternative energy sources have much shorter payback times. Prices for industry are not taxed as much and are at par with other EU member states.
A big thing in all Nordic countries is the use of waste and environmental heat for heating homes, or district heating. This means that waste heat generated in a power plant or in industrial processes is not dumped in the atmosphere or in river or sea water, but is transported to residential and commercial buildings for space heating. District heating can save lots of energy and be quite profitable, really. It requires a network of pipes to be constructed between the heat source and the heat demand, involving large investments and creating interdependencies between power plants and homes. Heat sources and demand should not be too far apart, otherwise losses and costs would become too large. In the Eastern US power comes from plants in Appalachian coal states and is transported over quite some distances. That's an extra barrier for implementation of district heating. In Denmark they had a similar situation, with a dozen central power plants generating electricity for the nation. Nowadays, the map of Denmark is dotted with many small combined heat and power (chp) generators, producing heat close to where the demand is and feeding electricity to the grid. You don't get the economies of scale of a large power plant, but the overall efficiency is much higher, compensating the loss of scale. Large amounts of renewable resources or high energy prices and shorter distances between supply and demand are the preconditions that helped put the nordic countries in the lead. These conditions are less favorable in the US. Yes, there are vast amounts of renewable resources - there's plenty of sun in the southwest and lots of wind in the midwest and along the ocean coasts - however, the demand is generally far from where the resources are. Besides, energy prices in the US are much lower than in the Nordic countries, giving any alternative a hard time to earn its place in the market.
But Jes Christensen touched upon another issue, too. He said: you have to do it together, and have fun doing it. And: Danes are the happiest people on the world. This caused laughter, but it's less of a joke than you might think and a crucial point indeed. Danes see value in collectivity, doing things together and cooperating to move the country forward. Apparently, the Danes are relatively united as to where the country should go when it comes to energy. Denmark (and other Nordic countries) has a different value system than the US, which made them accept keeping high energy prices in the first place, government interventions in the power market and more interdependence for the common good. It allows the nordic countries to organize the public and private capacities and harvest the low-hanging fruit. This is a fundamental difference between nordic countries and the US, where much of the economically profitable efficiency measures remain untouched (see Mckinsey 2007: Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?). To see where this difference comes from, we may have to look at demographics. In Denmark more than 90% is of Danish origin. Other Nordic countries have relatively homogenous populations, too. In the US the vast majority may be white (79%), but the whites stem from a wide spectrum of European origins. Like it or not, Robert Putnam (2007) found that in the short term solidarity and trust - including trust in government and academia - suffer in ethnically diverse communities, which might complicate the consensus building needed to transform an economy. This effect may fade over time when younger generations with interethnic social networks grow up, but the urgency of the challenge leaves little time. (I'm NOT saying ethnic diversity should be limited. I'm much in favor of interethnic exchange and exploration and I think energy transformation can be used to foster that.)
In conclusion, the lessons from the Nordic countries are inspiring and valuable, but major differences in value systems and geography complicate their transferability to the US. In the mean time, in the US, the distrust and divides seem to only grow bigger.
