Imagine for a second that oil prices in the USA today were at the same levels as those in Europe, and have been from the start. And yes. That means gasoline for $8 per gallon.

How would the world look like? Would we have a war in Iraq? Would we have a better climate? Would we have less terrorism? Would the US economy be in a better shape?

(more…)

Sweden has approved Universal Wind Offshore’s plans to construct Scandinavia’s largest offshore wind farm.

The wind farm will be built in the Kattegatt strait about 30 kilometres off Sweden’s southwestern coast and cover an area of about 60 square kilometres. Once completed the wind farm will be one of the largest in Europe.

The wind farm will consist of a maximum of 108 wind turbines with a height of 200 metres and a capacity of 860 megawatts (MW). The wind farm is expected to produce three terawatt hours (TWH) a year and will double the Swedish wind power output.

(more…)

If you didn’t think Brita’s plastic water bottle advertising campaign was disgusting this one surely is. The Swedish company Flygbussarna (shortly translated to The Flight Busses) wants to get the word out about their recent environmental efforts.

According to the company every third buss that goes to Arlanda (the largest airport in Sweden) is running on Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME), which is a form of biodiesel. The biodiesel fuel is supposedly coming from fields near the airport.

(more…)

Mohan Munasinghe, vice-president of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), said during a lecture at Cambridge University that climate change will lead to a “fortress world in which the rich lock themselves away in gated communities and the poor must fend for themselves in shattered environments.”

Climate change is, or could be, the additional factor which will exacerbate the existing problems of poverty, environmental degradation, social polarisation and terrorism and it could lead to a very chaotic situation.[...]

(more…)

A currently running advertising campaign from Brita, a German company that specializes in water filtration products, says in its ad slogan that “last year 16 million gallons of oil were consumed to make plastic water bottles.”

(more…)

Here at Green Blog we love bikes. They are green, easy and cheap to maintain and will even help you go down in weight.

But of course they also have their downsides. And one of the worst is that they are so easy to steal! But maybe the “Bike Tree” can help keep your bike safer, and even save some space in crowded areas?

The idea is pretty simple. Instead of parking you bike in an ordinary bicycle stand you lift it up in a “tree” away from the ground (see above image). The “tree” has room for five other bikes besides your own.

(more…)

While the discussions about high-speed railway systems are many and the people who want them are even more in Sweden the political decisions that are needed still seems far away.

Sweden who once was a leading railway country now seems dreadfully behind the rest of Europe when it comes to high-speed railway systems.

(more…)

When you are browsing around on the Internet, reading your emails, watching online videos, chatting with friends and co-workers etc you probably don’t think about the many and massive data centers that are needed to run all those things.

Just in USA alone these data centers used enough energy to power nearly 6 million homes during 2005. And the energy usage is expected to double by year 2011.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton takes a closer look on what is being done to make these “SUV’s of the tech world” more energy efficient and green, something that might not be as easy as you think.

(more…)