Increasing efforts to develop engines using non-fossil fuels like ethanol and biodiesel mean that consumers need not give up on big, luxury cars
Danderyd, Sweden: Perhaps more than most Europeans, Swedes have a love affair with big cozy cars. And with good reason: Volvo and Saab, two of the world’s best-known brands for comfort and safety, are made right in their own backyard.
“We’re real Svenssons,” said Victoria Klintberg, a teacher who believes her use of a roomy Saab to ferry her two children, a Labrador retriever and her husband, Matti, around town constitutes the essence of Swedishness. “We have to have a station wagon,” she said.
Olle Maberg, a 76-year-old retired executive, got into his four-wheel drive Volvo V70 outside a shopping centre in Danderyd and said, “It feels much safer to be in a big car than in a small one.”
But as concern about global warming ripples across this country, the average Swede’s relationship with comfortable — and highly polluting — cars is becoming strained.
The most recent available European Union statistics show that Sweden has the highest-pollution-emitting cars in Western Europe. Many of those happen to be Volvos and Saabs, which tend to be roomy, high-horsepower models that emit a high count of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
In 2004, when the average new car in the 15 countries that belonged to the EU at the time spewed out 163 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometre, the equivalent number in Sweden was 196. According to a study by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the biggest cars in all of Sweden are found here in Danderyd, a wealthy municipality with average emissions of 211 grams a kilometre.
Now a debate is brewing over how to reduce car emissions here — one with important parallels in many other European countries, especially Germany, where citizens also love the bigger, carbon-emitting luxury cars produced by their automakers.
The task was given new urgency in February when the European Commission proposed limiting emissions from new passenger cars to 120 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometre, or 6.8 ounces a mile, by 2012. And it is forcing Swedes to weigh a delicate trade-off between support for their cherished automakers and the nation’s rapidly greening attitude in which a fourth of their energy in 2003 came from renewable sources.
“In the 1950s, when Volvo and Saab made smaller cars for ordinary people, they came to define a typical Swede,” said Gunnar Falkemark, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Swedish car industry. “This sentiment has stuck, and people keep buying them.”
At the end of 2005, Volvo and Saab, which were sold in the 1990s to Ford and General Motors, respectively, together made up more than 40% of the top 10 brands on Swedish roads. Last year, all four top-selling models came from the two carmakers.
http://www.livemint.com/2007/07/05204706/In-Sweden-its-global-warming.html
Danderyd, Sweden: Perhaps more than most Europeans, Swedes have a love affair with big cozy cars. And with good reason: Volvo and Saab, two of the world’s best-known brands for comfort and safety, are made right in their own backyard.
“We’re real Svenssons,” said Victoria Klintberg, a teacher who believes her use of a roomy Saab to ferry her two children, a Labrador retriever and her husband, Matti, around town constitutes the essence of Swedishness. “We have to have a station wagon,” she said.
Olle Maberg, a 76-year-old retired executive, got into his four-wheel drive Volvo V70 outside a shopping centre in Danderyd and said, “It feels much safer to be in a big car than in a small one.”
But as concern about global warming ripples across this country, the average Swede’s relationship with comfortable — and highly polluting — cars is becoming strained.
The most recent available European Union statistics show that Sweden has the highest-pollution-emitting cars in Western Europe. Many of those happen to be Volvos and Saabs, which tend to be roomy, high-horsepower models that emit a high count of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
In 2004, when the average new car in the 15 countries that belonged to the EU at the time spewed out 163 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometre, the equivalent number in Sweden was 196. According to a study by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the biggest cars in all of Sweden are found here in Danderyd, a wealthy municipality with average emissions of 211 grams a kilometre.
Now a debate is brewing over how to reduce car emissions here — one with important parallels in many other European countries, especially Germany, where citizens also love the bigger, carbon-emitting luxury cars produced by their automakers.
The task was given new urgency in February when the European Commission proposed limiting emissions from new passenger cars to 120 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometre, or 6.8 ounces a mile, by 2012. And it is forcing Swedes to weigh a delicate trade-off between support for their cherished automakers and the nation’s rapidly greening attitude in which a fourth of their energy in 2003 came from renewable sources.
“In the 1950s, when Volvo and Saab made smaller cars for ordinary people, they came to define a typical Swede,” said Gunnar Falkemark, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Swedish car industry. “This sentiment has stuck, and people keep buying them.”
At the end of 2005, Volvo and Saab, which were sold in the 1990s to Ford and General Motors, respectively, together made up more than 40% of the top 10 brands on Swedish roads. Last year, all four top-selling models came from the two carmakers.
http://www.livemint.com/2007/07/05204706/In-Sweden-its-global-warming.html