winning sustainable development

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Winning sustainable development

Text: Stefan Edman

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Text: Stefan Edman

Winning sustainable developmentA jubilee book published in 2009 on the ten year anniversary of the Göteborg Award for Sustainable Development.Text: Stefan Edman, Graphic design: Sofia Brolin Photo: Rolf Hallin, Magnus Gotander, Peter Svenson, Angelica Svensson, Nicholas Major, Mats Samuelsson and others Translation: Camille Forslund Print: Elanders

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PREFACE

carl bennetCEO Carl Bennet AB,

Vice chair of the association

kia andreassonEnvironmental municipal

commissioner (Green Party)

helene odenjungMunicipal commissioner

(Liberal Party)

annelie hulthénChair of the Municipal Executive Board (Social Democrat), Chair

of the association

Is there anything more important than contribu-ting to sustainable development in Sweden and the world – ecologically, socially and financially? The climate issue and other local and global challenges demand a lot of imagination and change in techno-logy, finance, social organisation an more.

The problems, however, can be solved and there are a lot of very promising developments. But there is no time to waste!

The Göteborg Award for Sustainable Development is one of Sweden’s largest international awards in its genre and its standing and credibility have been increa-sing ever since it was introduced in 2000. The purpose of the prize is to stimulate and encourage innovators: scientists, entrepreneurs, opinion leaders and others.

Without the generous financial and inspirational support continuously provided by the founders and sponsors of the award – Göteborg City, a number

of large companies and a pension fund – this ambi-tion could never have been realised.

This jubilee book – celebrating the ten year anni-versary of the award – provides a picture of prizes past, but more importantly, it depicts how these ideas have and are evolving. What’s happening with the passive houses we awarded in 2003? Have hy-brid cars improved? What developments have been sparked by the prize money awarded to the Fair-trade coffee cooperative in Rwanda?

We hope that the municipality and companies will use this book as well as schools, associations and other places where people are looking for updated and easily accessible knowledge about one of the most important questions of our time.

Göteborg November 2009The Board for the Göteborg Award Association for

sustainable development

ThE GöTEboRG AwARd FoR SuSTAinAblE dEvEloPmEnT10 years 2000-2009

8 | Winning sustainable development

winning sustainable developmentcontent

p.12

p.26

award winner 2001fsc (forest stewardship council) and kravFor their work with environmental certification and eco-labelling in the forestry and food industries, respectively.

p.18

Consumer power – in the

forest and on your plate!

Can you drive a car on water?award winner 2000geoffrey ballard (canada)For his dedication and efforts for promoting the continued development of the fuel cell technology.

this is the göteborg awardThe Göteborg award for Sustainable Development is one of Sweden’s largest awards of its kind. In this section you can read about how it started, its purpose and the award winner selection process.

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award winner 2003hans eek (sweden) and wolfgang feist (germany)

For the technology to warm houses without built in heating systems, ”passive houses”. People and sun are

enough to create a comfortable indoor climate, which leads to

lowered emissions of carbon dioxide.

award winner 2002gro harlem brundtland (norway)For her visionary and innovative work with environmental issues and the introduction of the concept Sustainable Development.

Gro got sustain-ability to Grow

award winner 2004joan bavaria (usa), tessa tennant (united kingdom)For their efforts in sustainable investments through which they have inspired companies to economical, social and environmental responsibility by building public opinion and promoting sustainable investment funds.

Easy on the climate and

your wallet: Warm houses

with no heating added

Putting new Green into Greenbacks for a healthier Earth

p.34

p.50

p.42


award winner 2006takeshi uschiyamda, takehisa yeagashi, yuichi fujii (japan)For their outstanding, goal-oriented and vital contribu-tions to the development of Prius, the world’s first com-mercial hybrid automobile.

Automotive revolution in Göteborg - but Japan was first!

G Day inspired hope

for the future

p.58

p.74

p.66

award winner 2005abahuzamugambi coffee cooperative (rwanda)For its pioneering effort to produce coffee in a sustainable way from social, environmental, as well as economic aspects, thereby contributing to a positive development in one of the poorest districts in Rwanda.

Coffee beans that spread

peace and progress

award winner 2007al gore (usa)For his commitment to increasing public awareness about global warming and thereby creating the prerequi-sites for putting an end to the climate crisis.

winning sustainable developmentcontent

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award winner 2009anna kajumulo tibaijuka, enrique peñalosa, sören hermansen

Each one comes from a separate continent and they are, locally and globally, knowledgeable, engaged and impatient doers and ambassadors for one of the most decisive factors

for humanity - the battle for sustainable development in the cities and towns around the globe. They have all been active

in achieving decisive system changes.

award winner 2008theo colborn (usa), margot wallström, jan ahlbom, ulf duus (sweden)All four award winners have made internationally important and noted efforts to clean up the chemical sludge.

Automotive revolution in Göteborg - but Japan was first!

p.82

p.90

Sustainable cities – can

Göteborg take the

lead?

EU will be rolling on clean wheels – thanks to West Sweden!

voices on the göteborg awardA number of people have given their perspective on the importance of the Göteborg Award, now and in the future – for Sweden, the region and the city.

p.98

who are the sponsors - and how do they see the award?The Göteborg Award would not exist without the generous financial support from the sponsors. p.106

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this is the göteborg award – green thoughts from us in the jury!

The New Scientist, the famous American scientific journal, recently asked ten leading scientists to think about how the

Nobel Prize could be improved in order to better cover modern breakthroughs in research. Their suggestion:

introduce a new prize – in global environment!

This is a brilliant idea, but definitely not new. Over ten years ago Göran

Johansson contacted the Nobel Foundation for that

very reason. The Founda-tion was not interested.

Instead the Chair of the Municipal Executive

Board woke the inte-rest of industrialist Carl Bennet. Soon after they launched what was then cal-led the Göteborg International Environmen-tal Award to reward unique

efforts for sustainable development, globally and locally.

Together with the Göteborg City far-sighted companies and banks (see page 106) formed an association aimed at ensuring the generous annual award of one million Swedish crowns.

Stefan Edman was appointed to select and chair the award jury made up of members from science and industry. The team has also had highly creative project managers, first Per Forsberg and now Lennart Wassenius.

The foundation of our strong com-mitment has always been integrity, in other words a totally independent jury that is no way influenced by politics or any other special interests. This has worked excellently and is probably the


main reason for the award’s high standing and its honorable renown.

Early on the jury decided that the award may be given to a person or organisation that has contri-buted to: • conserving resources and furthering renewable

raw materials or ecological solutions • the solution to a problem (area) that can lead to

a technological break- through or ”system change”

• creating and driving a process concerning the environment which has been important for the Göteborg region as well as in a larger perspective

• development towards greater global justice. The common denominator is sustainable

development, a much broader and deeper notion than “environment”. This was also the reason why we changed the name to the Göteborg Award for Sustainable Development, or the Göteborg Award for short.

Right from the start we wanted diversity and variation in our choice of award winners. The cho-sen few should be a part of the international elite in their field; they might be scientists but they can also be economists, entrepreneurs, opinion leaders or pedagogues.

Most of the jury’s work is done in the period De-cember to May with meetings and “homework”. We start with a broad global scanning of possible award winners, then narrow down our search and finally move into deep research with the help of experts from many different fields. We make our decision during a two-day meeting in May, often located on

some agreeable island on the West Coast of Sweden.The award winner is presented to the media in

August. After that we spend our time arranging the award ceremony. Together with Göteborg City and the sponsor companies we send invitations to semi-nars held in conjunction with the ceremony that are connected to different aspects of the award.

The climax is naturally the award celebra-tion in the last week of November! It starts with the jury and the recently arrived award winners – sometimes still suffering from some jetlag – eat-ing breakfast together.

After that we participate in the seminars, which of-ten cater to younger participants. At night we open the doors to a celebration filled with entertainment, speeches, music and, of course, bestowing the award check and the silver globe.

Naturally the award winners provide intellectual stimulation and new exciting knowledge. Out of the limelight, in a more private setting, many of them also express personal friendship, warmth and humour. Getting to know them is a privilege for us.

For instance, take the “father of the fuel cell”, the mild Canadian Geoffrey Ballard, who received our very first award – and who so very skillfully talked with the upper secondary school pupils in Angered. Or take the Swedish architect Hans Eek who sang a very clever thank you song to both people and fish at the dinner in the aquarium hall at Universeum. An unforgettable moment was when the now deceased Joan Bavaria, a “green” professor in economics from the USA, with tears in her eyes told the audience how wonderful it was

“The climax is naturally

the award celebration in

the last week of November!”

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Representatives from the Fairtrade labelled coffee cooperative Maraba

in Rwanda receive the award at the Museum of World Culture in

Göteborg.

Crown Princess Victoria presents the award to Al Gore before an

audience of seven thousand at the award ceremony in Scandinavium.

In conjuncture with the annual award celebration in Novem-

ber the Göteborg Award offers a number of popular seminars on the theme for the year, often including

and for students.


to be the guest of the environmentally conscious Sweden and Europe for a few days. Another very moving meeting was with the hopeful young wo-men and men leading Maraba, the Fairtrade coffee cooperation in the genocide plagued Rwanda.

Al Gore was honoured in Scandinavium in January 2008. It was a grand affair with a sympho-nic orchestra, the opera ballet, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Eliasson was keynote speaker and Crown Princess Victoria presented the award. The audience of seven thousand stamped and cheered! It was also a solemn moment when the Nobel Prize laureate Arvid Carlsson from Göteborg presented the award to among others Margot Wall-ström and the 81 year old toxicology professor Theo Colborn.

“It has been ten wonderful years,” says the initia-tor Göran Johansson, who has passed on the chair’s gavel to Anneli Hulthén both in the Municipal Exe-

cutive Board and in the Göteborg Award Association. Göran believes that the award has been a driving

force in the local effort to create more sustainable development. He mentions the city’s investments in passive houses, for example, at northern Älv-stranden. However, he thinks it a disappointment that Maraba coffee cannot be found in shops and municipal offices.

“We can’t award such a fine prize and then sit on our hands! When we created it we felt from the start that we have to live up to it in practice!”

This is music to the jury’s ears. We believe that Göteborg has come a long way towards greater sustainability but that government, university and industry (“the triple helix”) must be inspired by the award, among other things, and make an effort to compose a common green strategy for the entire Göteborg region.

Hopeful regards!Stefan Edman, Chair, Elin Eriksson, Lotta Göthe,

Yvonne Wallin, Lars Hallén, Johan Trouvé, Russel Johnson

lennart wassenius Project leader of the Göteborg Award

göran johanssonInitiator of the Göteborg Award

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The jury together at the foot of the Pater Noster lighthouse, from left Elin Eriksson, Yvonne Wallin, Johan Trouvé, Lotta Göthe, Russel Johnson, Stefan Edman, Lars Hallén.


Can you drive a

car on water?

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award winner 2000geoffrey ballard, canadaFor his dedication and efforts for promoting the continued development of the fuel cell technology.

PA

UL

KA

NE

/GE

TT

y IM

AG

ES

”The goal was to invent a

commercially viable fuel cell

engine that runs on hydrogen

and emits nothing but plain H2O!”

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An estimated billion cars are rolling around on the roads of the world – and hundreds of thousands more join them every year. Almost all of them run on petrol or diesel.We know that the earth’s climate cannot sustain this in the long run, which is why the arrival of energy efficient vehicles that run on biogas, biodiesel and other climate friendly fuels brings hopes.

Even if the number of eco-cars is on the rise in Sweden and some other countries, they are still few and far between. Assume that in, say

ten to twenty years, they increased drastically! This raises the question: Can the world’s forests, fields, household waste and other biological raw materials meet the need for the gigantic amount of renewable fuel these cars would require?

Most experts say it’s not possible, which is why electric cars have become so interesting. They are the most climate smart alternative, as long as their electricity is produced without greenhouse gas emissions, in other words, it’s generated by water, wind, wave, bio and solar power!

The Göteborg Award has recognised two aspects of this technology - the hybrid, which runs on a combination combustion and electric engine (see page 66) and the fuel cell, the engine that directly converts the fuel it uses, usually hydrogen, into electricity that then makes the car run.

The late Geoffrey Ballard was our very first award winner in 2000. He was born in 1932 and

received his Ph.D. in Geophysics from Washington University in St. Louis. For decades his goal was to invent a commercially viable fuel cell engine that runs on hydrogen and emits nothing but plain H2O! His dream came true in 1993 when Ballard, in his hometown of Vancouver, launched the first fuel cell driven transit bus in the world.

He was a talented entrepreneur and he built strategic alliances to ensure the continued progress of the fuel cell and its applications. The ultimate objective is to reduce environmental impact on land, air and water. For this reason he was listed on Time Magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet”.

The Göteborg Award jury wrote in its motiva-tion that the fuel cell “may just possibly turn the world around by encouraging a more efficient use of natural resources and help reduce pollution both on global and local levels. Fuel cell technology may play a key role in the international work of preven-ting climate change.”

Right up to the end Geoffrey Ballard was active through his company General Hydrogen, which


works with hydrogen technology and distribution. When he received the prize from Margot Wall-ström in Göteborg he called for “a joint effort by scientists, governments and industry to accomplish a changeover from the current petrol economy to a hydrogen economy” in his acceptance speech.

Göran Lindbergh, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, agrees. To produce a fuel cell car with a relatively reasona-ble price tag in a not too distant future will require enormous resources.

“What makes fuel cells so expensive right now is in part the material in the fuel cell, and in part constructing a cell that has a lifetime of at least ten thousand hours. you need to produce series of around a million units for this to be affordable.”

Fuel cells are fed with hydrogen, which is pro-duced from ordinary water through electrolysis, i.e. electrical current that breaks up water molecules

into particles, among them hydrogen. Then 50-60 percent of the hydrogen is converted into electri-city in the car’s fuel cell. The electrical current is then used with 95 percent efficiency in an electric motor that turns the wheels.

All in all about half of the hydrogen fuel is used to run the car, which is more than twice as much as a conventional combustion engine where less than 25 percent of the petrol in the tank actually

fuels the car. The rest is dis-sipated in heat losses.

Around the turn of the century many experts believed the fuel cell would soon be ready for market. Mercedes was one of the

carmakers that announced it would have one hund-red thousand fuel cell cars in serial production by 2006. That didn’t happen.

Geoffrey Ballard didn’t believe mass use of the technology would start with automotive applica-tions. He always thought it would be introduced by producing electricity in homes. Quite simply,

this is how a fuel cell worksFuel cells are often powered by hydrogen gas. Inside the cell this is either directly converted to electricity, for powering lights or refrigerators, or used to keep the electrical motor in a car running. The only residual product of the fuel cell – exhaust fume – is water.

”Fuel cells are fed with

hydrogen, which is produ-

ced from ordinary water

through electrolysis.”


people would be able to generate the electricity they needed to light lamps, heat irons or chill refri-gerators with a hydrogen-driven fuel cell.

Göran Lindbergh believes fuel cells will be established on the market in around ten years. The long wait is not primarily because the technology won’t be ready until then.

“No, most of the technological challenges are already solved. We know how to package hydrogen and safely store it in the vehicle. The delay is due, once again, to the prohibitive price, which will con-tinue to be a substantial problem as long as petrol and diesel are as cheap as they are today.”

Lindbergh doesn’t see hybrid technology as a competitor to fuel cells. His belief is that they will conquer the world together, step by step. Both of them are used in electrical vehicles and they complement each other: all fuel cell cars will also be hybrid cars equipped with batteries that are in part recharged through regenerative braking. The hybrid’s con-ventional combustion engine can run on fuel like climate smart biogas.

One drawback with fuel cell vehicles is, howe-ver, the requisite infrastructure. Drivers have to be able tank hydrogen at a petrol station – in a world where all the stations are built to handle fluid fuel and only a handful can supply biogas!

“Well, obviously it’s a huge challenge. Germany has begun to deal with it and is installing hydro-

gen pumps in Berlin as well as other cities and regions. It’s logical to start with fuel cell driven busses and taxis that traffic cities and towns and can be tanked at a limited number of places near garages and buss stops.”

yet the question remains: If the world is already gaining access to the rechargeable hybrid car that can be flexibly fuelled with electricity from the grid, petrol and renewable fuel why invest vast sums on fuel cell vehicles and the infrastructure for hydrogen fuel?

“The answer,” says Göran Lindbergh, “is that for climate reasons we have to stop using petrol completely and the renewable fuels that are supposed to replace it won’t be enough to tank all the hybrid cars. Trucks that run on diesel, and which are approximately as

efficient as fuel cell cars, don’t have access to enough raps biodiesel etc. to fuel all of them. As far as pure electrical cars are concerned it will probably take a long time to develop enough energy dense, lightweight and cheap batteries that function for long trips. I think electrical cars will be a special niche among hybrids…”

To sum it all up: Geoffrey Ballard, the first recipient of the Göteborg Award was uniquely prescient! The fuel cell car is in all likelihood the most climate smart alternative to the car engines of today. And these cars can, at least indirectly, run on water!

”Most of the techno-

logical challenges

are already solved.”

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geoffrey ballardGeoffrey Ballard received the award for his important and crea-tive contribution to the development of fuel cell technology and its applications. The fuel cell may just possibly turn the world around by encouraging a more efficient use of natural resources and help reduce pollution both on global and local levels. The fuel cell technology may play a key role in the international work of preventing climate change.

award winner 2000

Geoffrey Ballard accepts the award from Margot Wallström.


Consumer power

– in the forest and

on your plate!

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award winner 2001fsc (forest stewardship council) and kravFor their work with environmental certification and ecolabelling in the forestry and food industries, respectively.

ER

IK A

BE

L/S

CA

NP

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“The KRAV ecolabel tells us that these

vegetables have been grown without

commercial fertilisers and synthetic

pesticides, sparing both land and water.”

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The Göteborg Award 2001 was shared equally between KRAV and FSC, two ecolabelling organisations that step by step contributed to creating an ecologically more sustainable market for food, pa-per, furniture and many other products.

Nine out of ten Swedes recognise the KRAV label. Not near as many of them know that it stands for the key concepts Good envi-

ronment, Good animal care, Good health and Social responsibility.

The ecolabel on a bunch of bananas or package of meat is a signal to us consumers to buy the pro-duct and support an environmentally friendly and ethical production that KRAV has certified. The ecolabel tells us that these vegetables have been grown without commercial fertilisers and synthe-tic pesticides, sparing both land and water from unnatural chemicals. This in turn, guarantees that farmers in poor countries don’t have to deal with hazardous pesticides.

KRAV (Swedish for demand) demands – and promotes – a healthier balance between animal husbandry and agriculture. As far as possible, animal feed should be produced on the farm where the animals are raised. The nutriments can circulate and be recycled back into the local life cycle. This creates the right amount of fer-tiliser to put back on the fields, which reduces

nitrogen leaching into lakes and rivers.Naturally animals are allowed to be themselves

and live well. KRAV pigs often spend their entire lives outdoors, grubbing and wallowing in mud baths whenever they like. Chickens can roam freely, eat greens and nab worms during the summer.

Fruits and vegetables grow in rich earth without chemically induced stress and ecolabelled food is “honest”. It contains no synthetic flavours, sweet-eners or trans fats.

Ecolabelling also takes the work environment into consideration. A product that may otherwise meet certification demands may not be approved because of social and working conditions.

KRAV started in 1985 and is an economic as-sociation under the wing of LRF and more than 25 other national member organisations.

In 2001 they received half of the Göteborg Award. How has the ecolabel developed since then?

“Sales have increased every year by around ten percent percent. In 2007-2008 sales grew by more than ten percent each quarter!” says Johan Ceije, who is very pleased with this success. He is the head


of the section at KRAV’s headquarters in Uppsala that deals with analysis of the climate and the world around us.

“I think the in-tense interest in the climate the past few years has bolstered us. People want to have an impact and take responsibility for the environment, and organic food is one way to do that. However, we still only have five percent of retail food sales!”

In recent years KRAV has added to its product range with items such as fish and fish products, perishables, fruit and vegetables.

“We are also bringing climate impact into our criteria, although we won’t mark products as “climate-labelled”.

“The process is much more complicated than most people realise, which is why we are starting on a small scale with fish, milk and greenhouse

cultivated vegetables. For instance, in order for a cucumber to be approved the source of heat in a greenhouse must come from at least 80 percent renewable

energy. In time we will require 100 percent! When it comes to KRAV certified milk we make demands on animal fodder, and farmyard manure must be sifted into the ground so that it leaches as little climate aggressive laughing gas as possible.”

If KRAV is a household name, Forest Steward-ship Council, FSC, is practically anonymous with a recognition factor of only 18 percent. It’s an interna-tional organisation that certifies responsible forestry

green consumer signalsThe combination of environmental cer-tification of operations and ecolabelling products plays an increasingly important role in stimulating sustainable develop-

ment. Such systems provide consumers with the chance to directly promote the production and use of ecological goods and services on the market.

”Criteria and labelling refer

solely to forests management,

not enrichment of the products.”


and labels products derived from it. It was founded in 1993 and currently consists of member organisa-tions in 36 countries.

FSC is built on cooperation between different interests: Economic (forest owners and forestry companies), environmental (environmental orga-nisations) and social (local inhabitants, indigenous peoples, employees). It has adopted ten principles and a number of criteria, along with rules regar-ding traceability and labelling products.

Forests managed according to FSC demands can be certified by one of the organisations FSC has approved. Products that contain wood from these forests can be labelled with the FSC symbol. Certified timber comes from 27 countries, among them several of the big exporting countries in the Global South, although not Indonesia.

FSC principles and criteria should be adapted to each country’s situation. In 1998 Sweden was the first country in the world to have a national standard approved. This has contributed to the rapid growth in the number of certified forests in Sweden. Other countries, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Papua New Guinea, are following suit.

FSC has, in a very short time, had a very big impact on the market and proof of this is that it now has a number of competitors. Furniture companies and other major buyers, particularly in England, de-

clared early on that they intended to buy FSC tim-ber as soon as it was available. They also promised to refrain from wood with unclear origins.

“In the past six or seven years the FSC has be-come increasingly market oriented,” states Mårten Larsson, director of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation. From 2004 to 2008 he was the chair of the Swedish FSC.

“In the beginning stringent demands were made on the traceability of a product back to the certified forest. However, since the forest industry’s transportation and enrichment chains

are complicated and forest holdings are spread over vast areas, it wasn’t very good for the environment. This would have led to a dramatic increase in moving timber around. Our solution was to lower threshold levels and implement a work method that allowed even uncertified raw material to be controlled.”

FSC has three labels; FSC Pure, FSC Mixed Sources and FSC Recycled. FSC Pure still guaran-tees 100 percent traceability to the certified forestry.

“Consumer interest has really accelerated and, for example, most newspapers are printed on FSC certified paper,” says Mårten.

The Swedish standard has developed since 1998 primarily regarding the rules for cooperation with local communities, maintenance of high conservation value forests and the use of exotic species of trees.

“Forests managed according to FSC

demands can be certified by one of

the organisations FSC has approved.”

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The Award is shared equally between two organisa-tions that have considerable and growing importance for environmental certification and ecolabelling within forestry and food:

• FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) - a global organisation which has, among other things, influenced developments in Sweden.

• KRAV (The Control Association for Ecological Cultivation) - a Swedish organisa-tion with growing importance as a role model for other countries.

award winner 2001


Gro got sustain-

ability to Grow

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award winner 2002gro harlem brundtlandFor her visionary and innovative work with environmental issues and the introduction of the concept Sustainable Development.

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”How can we transform our

technology, politics and lifestyle

so that we create a more sustainable

world, city or village?”

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Every day a billion human beings are forced to drink dirty wa-ter. Two billion don’t have electricity. Many coastal waters have been overfished. And millions and millions of people are climate refugees, forced to leave their homes because drought, floods or cyclones have made it impossible to live there.Anyone can see that developments on our planet are still mo-ving in the wrong direction – even though positive trends are growing. The big question is: How can we transform our tech-nology, politics and lifestyle so that we create a more sustainable world, city or village?

Someone who has spent a long time think-ing about this is Gro Harlem Brundtland, formerly the Prime Minister of Norway and

Director-General of the World Health Organisation WHO. Fifteen years before she received the Göte-borg Award in 2002 she handed over a groundbrea-king report, “Our Common Future”, to the General Secretary of the UN. Together with her group of international experts, the Brundtland Commis-sion, she introduced the key concept - sustainable development.

What is sustainable development? The Commission’s definition is: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compro-mis-ing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Development has three intrin-

sic dimensions that must work cohesively:The financial dimension, which states that no

country can achieve economic growth if the envi-ronment is deteriorated, there is no social equity and no growth in human capital, such as health and education.

The social dimension, which states that resour-ces, power and influence must be divided justly and equally so that everyone has access to social services and individuals feel safe and involved.

The ecological dimension, which is about protec-ting and restoring the so-called ecosystem services. These are nature’s own processes like cleaning air and water, nutrient cycles, crop pollination, in other words everything that makes up the biological basis of all social welfare and economic development.


When peace, security, good government or envi-ronmental care lead to improvement in other areas such as stable economic growth there is also a good chance this will lead to sustainable development. However, financial development based on produc-tion that breaks down the environment, threatens ecosystems or makes people sick is anything but sustainable. Since we humans are dependent on nature for our survival we have to make sure we don’t deplete our ecosystems. Only then can we ensure health and economic development for future generations.

The UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was based completely on the Brundtland Commission’s findings. Seven thousand participants from 181 countries agreed on Agenda 21, a common action

plan for the survival of the planet. It covered a num-ber of small and large matters: the fight against po-verty, water shortages, deforestation and the spread of deserts, protecting the atmosphere, toxic chemi-cals, consumption patterns, energy conservation, children’s health, the role of women and NGOs, the

importance of trade unions and much more.

In other words, Gro got sustainability to grow and produce

measures in governments, organisations and in time, even businesses! Today sustainable development is a well known concept around the world, written into political programs and many companies’ business strategies.

This has without a doubt contributed to a dif-ferent mindset and in some cases real political chan-

this is sustainable developmentSustainable development was defined by Gro Harlem Brundtland and her expert commission through three aspects or dimensions: For the global community to develop well it must be environmentally, socially and financially sustainable. Problems can only be solved when all these three dimensions are involved in the solutions.

”Since we humans are dependent on nature

for our survival we have to make sure

we don’t deplete our ecosystems.”

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ges the past twenty years. However, Brundtland’s formula has also been criticised for being so broad and general it’s too blunt an instrument to solve old conflicts between growth and the environment, and financial and ecological interests.

Anders Wijkman, keynote speaker at the 2009 Göteborg Award Ceremony, was a member of the EU parliament for ten years and has also previously held the post of Assistant-Secretary-General of the UN. He was very happy when the 2001 EU Sum-mit in Göteborg adopted the sus-tainable strategy as a mainstay for all EU’s deci-sions.

“Unfortunate-ly in practice the Lisbon strategy for economic growth has dominated EU’s politics and decisions instead. I don’t deny the fact that we need financial capital, infrastructure and factories but we also need to take care of our natural capital, the ecosystems our entire existence is dependent upon. The whole BNP measurement of prosperity is off kilter; ecosystems aren’t even included in the calculations.”

Wijkman believes that growth – no matter what it contains – will always be number one, in EU as well as in the individual member countries. Funds to repair the environmental damage created by growth will be doled out from its fruits.

“Obviously this is completely unsustainable,

which is why I proposed we should merge the two strategies into one. This would help us get the ba-lance right.”

What has Gro Harlem Brundtland done since she received the award? Among other things, together with EU’s Margot Wallström and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, she has initiated the Road to Copenhagen, a network aimed at influen-cing the UN’s new global climate agreement.

“Climate justice” is now the message she is giving in all her mission trips around the world. It me-ans that the countries that have the grea-test impact on

climate must reduce their emissions the most. In ad-dition, they must help finance climate measures in the often poor developing countries which have little or no effect on climate but are severely affected by the climate crisis.

For Doctor Gro Harlem Brundtland there is no doubt that the environment, health and welfare are all interconnected and this was the theme of her award speech at Chalmers in 2002.

“The climate crisis is fundamentally about peace and security, matters that can only be resolved through cross-border agreements!”

”Climate justice is now the message she is

giving in all her mission trips around the

world. And that the environment, health

and welfare are all interconnected.”

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gro harlem brundtlandGro Harlem Brundtland received the award for her visionary leader-ship at the UN Earth Summit. The concept sustainable development was coined in a Summit final report “Our Common Future”. “Sustai-nable development is development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The report laid the foundation for Agenda 21.

award winner 2002

Gro Harlem Brundtland is app-lauded by three former Swedish Ministers for the Environment, from left to right: Birgitta Dahl, Olof Johansson and Lena Sommerstad.


Easy on the climate

and your wallet:

Warm houses with

no heating added

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award winner 2003hans eek and wolfgang feistFor the technology to warm houses without built in heating systems, ”passive houses”. People and sun are enough to create a comfortable indoor climate, which leads to lowered emissions of carbon dioxide.

”The climate crisis will increase

demand for energy conserving

technology all over the world, for

heating and air conditioning alike.”

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Energy crises and energy smart technology are nothing newTake the 18th century for instance. Huge swaths of Sweden were cleared of almost every tree in sight. Enormous forests crowded with pines and spruces were denuded and became moors covered in heather. Why? In the mountains for wood to feed the fires that melted iron ore into bar iron, the country’s most important export, and along the west coast to boil the oil out of plump herrings to make a fatty fuel sent to light the lamps of London and Paris.

This of course led to an alarming energy crisis, giving rise to problems from the cold and damp in the flimsy housing of the period. In

January 1767 the government commissioned archi-tect Carl Johan Cronstedt to construct an energy conserving fireplace to replace the stoves that de-voured wood and were used everywhere, from castles to cabins. It didn’t take Cronstedt long to present his idea - the porcelain stove! A clever, elegant furnace that had been heating Europe since the Middle Ages.

Some two hundred years later a modern version of Cronstedt appeared on the stage. His name was Hans Eek. Fresh out of Chalmers, this young architect would soon prove to be an innovator and entrepre-neur with remarkable foresight.

The year was 1974 and the Arab oil sheiks had just drastically cut the flow of oil deliveries to the West. The cost of petrol and heating a house went through the roof. Politicians talked about an oil crisis but the conflict was actually political and had nothing to do with a lack of energy. There were, for instance, extensive reserves of the black gold.

However, that didn’t stop a ripple of panic from spreading among the public. To assuage it Sweden’s government introduced the most string-ent construction norm for energy conservation in the world, and provided financial support for saving energy in small, everyday ways.

Hans Eek and his friends formed the architect firm Efem (E five), where the five Es stand for ex-perience, ecology, energy, economy and (a)esthetics. They focused on energy issues and participated in various architectural competitions.

Eek soon received a commission to construct a kind of experimental house for an environmentally concerned older teacher in Lidköping, Helga Henriks-son. It was fitted with a composting toilet and solar panels and generated a lot of interest from the media. Unfortunately, to the architect’s great dismay, he couldn’t get the house to function properly. Nonethe-less there was a lot to be learnt from the Helga house. The next home was built in Färgelanda and designed as a passive solar home with thick walls. The windows were small in the north wall and large in the south.


Now there was no stopping Efem from developing energy smart housing. Their next project was a block of houses on the outskirts of Karlstad. When the plans were shelved a group of potential homeowners followed through on the ideas and realised Tuggelite, a small, energy smart housing development.

Then in south-ern Germany and Halmstad the Swedish Construction Re-search Council and its German counter-part launched a low energy concept with apartment buildings based on Swedish construction technology and German heating systems. They use a fourth of the energy consumed by conventionally built German houses. Naturally this is excellent for the environme-nt, not to mention the inhabitant’s wallet! And yet the twelve terraced houses Eek constructed in Dresden a few years later undercut this sensationally low energy consumption by half. These houses function at a

mere eight kilowatt hours per square meter.Hans Eek began collaborating with Wolfgang Feist,

a German construction physicist that he met in Darm-stadt in the ‘80s. Feist had studied the energy conser-ving construction going on in Sweden and he built four houses in Darmstadt that he called passive houses.

The houses were an undeniable success. In 2001 a municipal housing company erects twenty passive house apartments in the little

town of Lindås south of Göteborg. They have no heating system. Not a drop of warm water flows in from an outside source and yet the people living in these houses are as comfy as bugs in a rug! They live in warm and comfortable houses even when winter temperatures become severe as they did in January 2002 when the thermometer dropped to -21.5 C°.

“I slept badly one night,” exclaimed our modern day Cronstedt, alias Hans Eek, the architect behind

“Naturally this is excellent for

the environment, not to mention

the inhabitant’s wallet!”

this is how passive houses workPassive houses don’t have a heating system or incoming heat from an outside source. However, they do have thick floors, roofs and walls, efficient heat exchanges, smart windows and solar panels. And they use very little energy!


the Lindå houses. “I remember how worried I was and I called to check that everything was okay, and thank god, it was!”

But what is the secret to maintaining normal tem-peratures in houses without any source of heating? The answer is ordinary Swedish building traditions tweaked with some modern technology:• Thick walls, 42 cm

insulation• Thick roof, 50 cm• Thick floors, 25 cm• Smart windows with an

U value of 0.85• Heat exchange in

which about 90 percent of indoor heat is mixed with incoming fresh air

• Solar panels on the roof that produce warm water to wash with“The philosophy behind the technique is embar-

rassingly simple,” Eek explains. “We start with heat insulation and build the houses as compact as we possibly can. The small amount of extra energy needed is derived in part from a so called heat exchanger in the ventilation system and in part from electrical appliances and the bodies of the people in the house (humans generate about the same amount of heat as a light bulb, 75 watts!).

In 2003 Hans Eek and Wolfgang Feist were honoured with the Göteborg Award, one million Swe-dish crowns. Eek donated half of his prize money to a scholarship for students at Chalmers University who develop smart technology.

How has passive house technology developed since then?

“There is an even greater focus on a holistic system. For example, Eksta Bostads AB now powers heat ex-changers with a pellets furnace instead of electricity.”

Today (2009) there are around 17,500 passive houses in the world and 13,000 of them are located in Germany, largely due to Wolfgang Feist’s intensive work there. Feist started the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt and is now a professor in building phy-sics at the Innsbruck University.

However, passive houses are also being develo-ped in Australia, Japan and China.

“I was personally involved in a project in the Chinese city Dalian, where a public utility company planned to produce 400 passive apartments. But

some problems came up and right now we don’t know what will happen.”

Hans Eek is also happy about developments in Sweden. He has started a national Passive House Centre in Sweden that provides guidance and edu-cation in Alingsås, a municipality that has decided to invest in passive house technology when they build or renovate public buildings and housing.

There are currently around 1,100 apartments in Sweden built with this technology but at least as many more will be completed during 2010-2011, in West Sweden and other parts of the country. They are slightly more expensive to build but far less expensive to run.

The climate crisis will increase demand for conser-ving energy technology all over the world, for heating and air conditioning alike. Hans Eek sees a positive future. There is really only one thing he regrets:

“That Wolfgang and I used the rather boring term passive house for our technology because, on the contrary, it’s a very active expression of modern energy conservation!”

“But what is the secret to

maintaining normal tempera-

tures in houses without any

source of heating?”

49

hans eek and wolfgang feist have been awarded the prize for their pioneering work with so-called passive houses, in par-ticular, residential buildings without heating systems, designed and constructed using an elegant and innovative synthesis of simple, time-tested and cost-effective technology. The technology, which requires great precision in methods and building processes, in a in a relatively conservative industry, will, contribute to a major reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels in particular and thereby reduce society’s emission of carbon dioxide, which impacts our climate.

award winner 2003

Prime Minister at the time, Gö-ran Persson, has just presented the award to, left to right, Hans Eek and Wolfgang Feist.


Putting new Green

into Greenbacks for

a healthier Earth

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award winner 2004joan bavaria (usa), tessa tennant (storbritannien)For their efforts in sustainable investments through which they have inspired companies to economi-cal, social and environmental responsibility by building public opinion and promoting sustainable investment funds.

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”The economy can sink into a deep crisis

resulting in a depression and mass

unemployment – and global warming can lead

to drought, floods and more extreme weather.”

53

These days Swedish media constantly writes about companies that make ”green investments” or work with ”sustainable business stra-tegies”. But ten or twelve years ago this was a relatively unknown concept for a great many business and political leaders.Two international trailblazers in this field received the Göteborg Award in 2004 for their groundbreaking work: Joan Bavaria and Tessa Tenant.

Back in 1969 when the American economist Joan Bavaria went to work at a bank in Boston she discovered that many customers

wanted to borrow money for projects that had social and environmental objectives. The problem was that financial institutions didn’t have instru-ments to handle these requests. So after awhile she started up Trillium Assets Management, a consul-tancy that became a pioneer in promoting social sustainability, primarily in state-owned companies.

In 1989 Bavaria went even further and founded CERES, a nationwide American network for inves-tors, environmental organisations and other parties interested in sustainable development, especially in climate matters. Its objective is to integrate social and environmental sustainability into capital markets “for the health of the planet and its people”.

Under the leadership of Joan Bavaria CERES launched three initiatives of global importance:

an environmentally adapted code of conduct, a standard for reporting sustainable development – currently used by 1,300 companies – and INCR, a network which at present has more than has 70 in-vestors managing more than seven trillion dollars (!) in assets to meet the climate challenge.

Joan Bavaria died in cancer in November 2008. When speaking in memorial in Joan her friend and successor described her as “a visionary who made an extraordinary contribution to creating and realising visions that change the world”.

Our other award winner in 2004, financial advi-sor Tessa Tennant, has a very impressive merit list. As “The Mother of Green Investments” English daily the Independent put her on their IoS Green List as one of Britain’s top hundred environmentalists.

Tennant founded England’s first green equity fund for sustainable investments back in 1988. Later on she helped launch the Carbon Disclosure


Project, a global initiative aimed at stimulating companies to continuously report and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

“Today I’m the working chair of the ICE Organisation Ltd.,” she says. “It’s a green consumer organisation that encourages people to formulate climate pro-mises and shop environmentally friendly and climate smart. It has to be easier, cheaper and more fun to be a sustainable consumer!”

Tessa continues to work for a greener capital market in Asia, primarily through her position as member of ASrIA, Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia.

Joan Bavaria and Tessa Tennant have spent years working with green investing and suddenly this field has become dramatically pertinent due to the crisis in

the economy and climate. Some experts call it a triple crisis and add on poverty. Others are introducing the concept of multiple crises, pointing out disruptions

in ecological systems – forests, oceans, the spread of chemicals – and the challenge of finding long term, sustainable ways to produce food and energy.

Clearly there are parallels between the financial and the climate crises. They are both

complicated systems that are difficult to predict, creating a great deal of uncertainty.

They both have a tipping point, a critical thres-hold, where the system may tip over or careen out of our control. The economy can sink into a deep crisis resulting in a depression and mass unemploy-ment – and global warming can lead to drought, floods and more extreme weather.

these are sustainable investmentsExamples of sustainable investments are when funds are invested in re-search on the development or commercialisation of energy efficient, climate neutral etc. environmentally friendly goods and services. These investments can also be made in already existing technologies such as wind power, solar cells, passive houses or inventions that have yet to leave the drawing board.

”Interest in green

investments is a fast

growing trend that

can’t be stopped.”


Many experts believe therefore that the climate and financial crises have similar roots and solutions. General Director of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon has, for instance, spoken of a twin challenge: the importance of handling both situations with the same measures. The recipe is called the Green New Deal which is a modern variation on President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1929. Enormous amounts of public funding were injected into the economy to revive it and create jobs. In the autumn of 2009 the UN Commission on Sustainable Develop-ment presented a green global Marshall Plan that included funding climate neutral technology.

However, other economists are more sceptical. Just because a financial crisis and climate crisis occur at the same time doesn’t mean they have a common source.

Tessa Tennant is deeply involved in these issues and keeps careful track of the latest events. She be-lieves interest in green investments is a fast growing trend that can’t be stopped.

“But the financial slump hit the industry hard and many companies need more time to mend. I go crazy when I think of how such a little group of greedy capitalists could devastate so much progress and so many positive developments for sustainable banks and investments. Now that governments have finally realised the importance of making major in-

vestments in infrastructure for mass transit all their money can have been washed down the black hole of debt caused by the crisis!”

A lot of cities and regions all over the world still have the ways and means to make advances. Take energy for instance! In Göteborg the Green Energy Cluster is a platform for cooperation and business development. Its purpose is to get more companies in West Sweden to produce renewable energy tech-

nology which might even lead to export revenues.

More than half of Sweden’s companies in the incineration sector are loca-ted in West Sweden. This is an industry with vested interests in energy conserva-

tion and a shift to renewable fuels.Biogas Väst, headed by Business Region Göte-

borg, includes a number of big companies, muni-cipalities and organisations. It works successfully with developing the market for biogas production, distribution, gas tanking stations and the use of gas-fuelled vehicles.

Tessa Tennant thinks the next few years will be a test period.

“The thing that makes me happiest right now is that countries like Brazil and South Korea are invest-ing heavily in long-term sustainable assets.”

”A lot of cities and regions

all over the world, like

Göteborg, still have the ways

and means to make advances. ”

57

joan bavaria (usa)Joan Bavaria, American econo-mist (1943-2008), was a pio-neer in making the financial market greener. She founded Trillium Asset Management, a consulting firm aimed at pro-

moting social sustainability, mainly in public companies. In 1980 she founded CERES, a national American network for investors, environmental organisations and others inte-rested in sustainable development, mainly in the climate field.

tessa tennant (great britain)Tessa Tennant, financial advisor, co-founded Great Britain’s first fund for sustainable investments. She has for many years been engaged in creating a greener

capital market in Asia, mainly by being a board member in ASrIA, the Association for Sustai-nable and Responsible Investment in Asia. She is also one of the initiators of the Carbon Dis-closure Project, a global initiative for reduced greenhouse gasses in companies.

award winner 2004

Joan Bavaria and Tessa Tennant receive the award from then Chairman of the Riksbank Lars Heikensten.


Coffee beans that spread

peace and progress

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award winner 2005abahuzamugambi coffee cooperative (rwanda)

For its pioneering effort to produce coffee in a sustainable way from social, environmental, as well as economic aspects, thereby contributing to a positive development in one of the poorest districts in Rwanda.

“The coffee farmers were educated in

plant care, cautious fertilisation

and efficient cultivation.”

61

Hutus and Tutsis make up the nine million citizens of the tiny African nation Rwanda. Complicated historical divisions had cre-ated deep-rooted suspicion and rancour between the two ethnic groups which led to a fight for power.In the spring of 1994 this animosity flared into violence. During one hundred horrific days almost one million Tutsis – and mode-rate Hutus – were murdered by agents of the Hutu nationalistic government and brutal militias.

Five years later a coffee cooperative was started in Maraba in the Huye district (previously the Butare Province) fifteen miles south of

the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. The cooperative was initiated by the local government together with the Rector of Rwanda’s National University, internatio-nal partners and the farmers themselves. The coo-perative was named Abahuzamugambi, i.e. “We who work together”. The idea behind the initiative was to try and stop the downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness and replace it with positive economic, social and political development.

The genocide had devastated Huye district, particularly the impoverished Maraba. young boys and men who had survived were either on the run or in jail and households consisted mainly of women and children. Health care was terribly inadequate, families couldn’t afford to send their children to school and the coffee grown was hard to sell. In time the flow of refugees returning to the area created an even greater need to produce

food, water, housing, arable land and work. Abahuzamugambi was launched in 1999 foun-

ded on an association of two hundred people. It had high social and environmental ambitions but lacked resources. Although the idea was to produce beans for the global Fairtrade Labelling Organisa-tion, it didn’t even have the right to sign an agree-ment to export coffee.

A unique cooperation between local, national and international players solved the problem. Many different groups, the universities in Michigan and Texas and – in particular – the English special coffee roaster Union Roasters participated. The cof-fee farmers were educated in plant care, cautious fertilisation and efficient cultivation. In the past the quality of the beans had suffered from poor harvesting methods and bad sorting, washing and treatment. There was little demand for low quality coffee beans and income from them was slight and irregular. The new project improved quality substanti-ally and the beans could be sold to the special coffee


market, where both demand and prices are higher.The cooperative expanded and its members were

increasingly enthusiastic and knowledgeable entre-preneurs. The majority of those out in the fields and in management were, and still are, women. The high class coffee Arabica Bourbon sold very well, parti-cularly in Great Britain and USA. The growing profits were ploughed back into society, for example, in health care and schools.

Abahuzamugambi has also inspired the creation of other coope-ratives throughout the entire province that had pre-viously been so riddled by violence. Many of them work with coffee production but others are focused on arts and crafts or other crops like cassavas and chilli peppers. By directly and indirectly engaging so many people “the coffee movement” helps to create a new, hopeful coexistence between former enemies. The practical day-to-day work reinforces conciliation and democratic cooperation.

In 2005 Abahuzamugambi received the Göte-borg Award. The leaders of the cooperative and Rwanda’s foreign minister at the time participated in the festive ceremony at the Museum of World Culture and in the seminary arranged by The Gö-teborg Award and the School of Global Studies at

Gothenburg University the day after.

How has the coffee cooperative developed since then?

“I’m happy to say that the coffee collective has grown tremendously since then,” says Jonas

Ewald, expert on Africa at the School of Global Stu-dies, Gothenburg University. “Today there are 1,250! Each member has a small plot, often under a hectare. If you include family members who benefit from reve-nues this business affects thousands people.”

Part of the prize money from Göteborg was used to build two new washing stations where the farmers can clean, sort and generally raise the quality and price of the beans. The collective has renovated its

fairtrade label good for the economyBy cornering a niche in the fair trade high quality market for coffee the cooperative has managed to get substantially higher prices for its product and use the money to develop better schools and healthcare in Maraba, one of the poo-rest districts in the country.

“The cooperative expanded and

its members were increasingly

enthusiastic and knowledgeable

entrepreneurs.”


warehouse and offices as well as started up an IT centre. It also bought two trucks to drive the beans from the plantations, which are mostly located on steep mountain slopes, to the washing stations. This has saved time and arduous work, especially for the growers from the more remote areas.

“They also put some money the bank for the future,” says Jonas and continues, “for different things, like education about the difference between growing organically and traditional agricul-ture. Rwandan coffee producers are having the same discussion we have here in Sweden.”

Abahuzamugambi farmers have, for the most part, replaced commercial fertilizer with or-ganic green fertilizing and instead of synthetic che-mical pesticides they are trying pyrethrum which is extracted from decorative flowers and protects well against parasites (but leaves pollinating bees alone!). It has been used in Central Africa for over a hundred years.

The Göteborg Award has made and is still ma-king a difference. One million Swedish crowns go a long way in a poor country like Rwanda. As the cooperative has become financially stronger more families have been able to affordbetter housing, health care and school tuition for their children. This has also inspired developments in the area at large. The collective is now working to get their coffee registered as organic. Awhile ago Maraba was given the honour of arranging the first interna-

tional competition for the best coffee in Africa, the Golden Cup Award.

Developments in Maraba and the Huye district strengthen national affinity and hope for future.

“Considering what Rwanda has gone through the advances the country has made since the dark years of the 1990s are very impressive,” says Jonas Ewald. “Its economic growth has been faster than most countries in Africa and Rwanda has focused

on rebuilding its infrastructure and investing in education, healt-hcare and stable social and political institutions. None-theless, huge chal-

lenges remain, not least of all the fight against po-verty. Economic growth has been restricted so far to the construction, service and tourism sectors where ripple effects spread relatively slowly. This is why projects like the one in Maraba that help remote areas and the most impoverished are so crucial.”

The only cloud in the coffee is that Maraba coffee – which has been sold in major grocery store chains in West Sweden and in solidarity shops all over the country – isn’t available in Sweden at the moment.

“Unfortunately, Löfbergs Lila, the coffee giant, has sued the importer Sackeus for trademark in-fringement since the cooperative coffee was sold in packaging with a ribbon of violet they consider too similar to the violet colour which is Löfberg’s brand. And until the matter is cleared up Sackeus doesn’t dare import it!”

“Recently the coffee cooperative

was given the honour of arranging

the first international competi-

tion for the best coffee in Africa.”

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abahuzamugambi coffee cooperative, rwandaThe Coffee Cooperative Abahuzamugambi in Maraba, Rwanda has been awarded the prize for its high quality coffee produced in a social, environmental, economic sustainable way, thereby contributing to hopeful development in its troubled nation.

award winner 2005

The representatives for the coffee cooperative accept the award.


Automotive revolution

in Göteborg - but

Japan was first!

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award winner 2006takeshi uschiyamda, takehisa yeagashi, yuichi fujii (japan)

For their outstanding, goal-oriented and vital contribu-tions to the development of Prius, the world’s first com-mercial hybrid automobile.

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”Ten years from now they will

probably make up the majority of all

newly manufactured cars worldwide.”

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Toyota’s management made their decision on a sunny day in 1993. The company was going to be a pioneer with the smar-test, most fuel efficient vehicles the world had ever seen. The gauntlet was thrown down before three ingenious top engine-ers: Invent the hybrid car and do it in two years!

It was a bold and prescient decision. Engineers Takeshi Uchiyamada, Takeshi yaegashi and yuichi Fuji enthusiastically accepted the chal-

lenge. Toyota supplied them with a sizeable sum of money and the carmaker’s best researchers, technicians and constructors. Two years later there it stood shiny and new - Prius, the world’s very first commercial hybrid driven car. Prius is a unique crossbreed that runs on both fuel and electric bat-teries. The technician trio had succeeded. In 2006 they were rewarded with the Göteborg Award for their exceptional feat.

Hybrids combine the strengths of electric mo-tors with the advantages of combustion engines. The energy generated by fuel-driven engines that is not immediately used to run cars is stored in batteries, which can also be recharged through re-generative braking. Thanks to this smart exchange hybrids consume half the energy of conventional petrol and diesel cars, which in turn means lower emissions of substances hazardous to our health and the environment.

The introduction of hybrid cars is considered to be the most revolutionary shift in technology since the now classic combustion engine saw the light of day more than a hundred years ago. A hybrid car is

always more fuel efficient, regardless of whether it runs on fossil or renewable fuel. If, in addition, it runs on renewable fuel and green electricity – sun, wind, water – it’s incomparable for the environ-ment!

The only disadvantage at this point in time is the higher sales price, due to the fact that it retains most of car’s traditional construction while several expensive parts have been added: one or more electrical motors, a substantial set of batteries and modern control electronics. However, as the price of fuel rises hybrid cars will become relatively less expensive. Within ten years they will proba-bly make up a majority of all newly produced cars worldwide.

Hybrid motors will also become the obvious choice for heavy vehicles and heavy equipment since in the long run they cut fuel consumption in half, which makes them very profitable for their owners. They use regenerative braking which char-ges the batteries. If the batteries run low the fuel engine automatically kicks in.

Japanese companies have produced hybrid driven excavators and Swedish Volvo is on the threshold of producing wheel loaders, busses and trucks. Recently the company received more than


short description of a hybrid carA hybrid car has two engines – a combustion combustion engine and an electric engine. The electric engine runs on a battery that is charged with excess energy from the combustion motor. When the car is freewheeling downhill or breaking, the electric motor serves as a generator. In addition, the petroleum motor switches off when the car stands still. In a normal car all this excess energy turns into heat that is ventilated out.

one hundred million Swedish crowns in funds from the US Department of Energy and Swedish Energy Agency to continue to develop hybrid technology for heavy vehicles.

Has any progress been made since the Toyota engineers received their one million Swedish crowns in prize money (which they immediately donated to Ekocentrum in Göteborg)?

“Absolutely,” says Göran Johansson. “The new Prius is 15 percent stronger and 11 percent more fuel effi-cient than the model which came out in 2006 and carbon dioxide emissions are only 90 gram per kilometre compared with 104 grams then!”

Göran is an experienced Volvo engineer and currently the MD of the battery company ETC and program director for Swedish hybrid and fuel cell research. He has great expectations for the Swedish Hybrid Vehicle Centre (SHC) that has its headquarters in the Lindholmen Science Park in

Göteborg. SHC was inaugurated in 2008 and is a platform for world leading experts and innovators in academia, business and society. In addition to Chalmers, SHC works together with tech univer-sities in Lund and Stockholm, Göteborg Energi, Business Region Göteborg, Vattenfall and many others. Its primary objective is to try and create new fuel efficient vehicles for the Swedish auto-

motive industry. However, the centre is also expected to spread knowledge in this field and act as a hub for Swedish hybrid vehicle research and development.

The Lindholmen Science Park also contains Test Site Sweden, the only neutral meeting place and demonstration arena of its kind in the world for mutual research projects within Intelligent Transport System (ITS). Focus is on the environment, vehicle safety and logistics.

The future of hybrid cars lies largely in being able to make the batteries lighter while increasing their ability to store energy. The Japanese continue

“Thanks to this smart

exchange hybrids consume

half the energy.”


to use hydrid batteries with nickel metal in their hybrid cars. However, development of this tech-nology seems to be at a standstill internationally. Up until now Swedish batteries have been built on traditional chemistry with lead electrodes and acid, and therefore they cost a fifth of a nickel-metal hydride battery.

But now lithium-ion batteries have arrived! They are both less expensive and safer than hydrides. They also have four to five times higher energy den-sity and effect density, i.e. they can store much more energy. The concept is being developed by, among others, BMW, Mercedes and SHC.

Hybrid gas cars are an exciting variant. In 2009 South Korean carmaker Hyundai was first with a motor that burns LPG, a mixture of different hydrocarbons. These days environmentally aware drivers are looking for a hybrid in which biogas – produced through fermentation of biomass, manure and sewage – can run a combustion engine. The technology is fully viable but so far no such car is on the market.

“A plug-in hybrid that you recharge overnight or during the day when you’re at work will probably be on the market by 2011, maybe 2012. Vattenfall, Volvo and ETC, located on the outskirts of Göte-borg, are all working on developing charging boxes.”

Göran Johansson believes it won’t be too long before it’s possible to supply a car battery with cur-rent while the car is being driven. Certain stretches will have a kind of charging plates built into the road – and when the car passes over electricity will auto-

matically be transferred to them through induction.But when will the electric car make it big?“Sometime around 2030, as far as Sweden is

concerned,” says Hans Folkesson, visionary chair of SHC. “By then about half the cars on the road will probably be pure electric. The other half will be hybrids, cars that run on both fuel and electricity. In this scenario only a fourth of the liquid fuel we con-sume today will be needed. And not just any fuel, but mostly different kinds of climate smart bio fuel.”

In about twenty years from now Sweden could have, in principle, fossil fuel free traffic. Trucks and other heavy vehicles will probably still run to a certain extent on diesel.

Small and middle-sized cars are the most interesting models to run on pure electricity. Today there are models that can travel 10-12 miles but if you add a small range lengthener (a little combustion engine with a generator) you can lengthen the distance the car can travel after it runs out of electricity.

“We might even have hydrogen driven fuel cell vehicles which produce their own electricity and store it in the batteries. However, we have a long road to go before we get there. One of the problems we have to solve is how to store hydrogen in cars. And then of course you have to build up a whole new infrastructure with stations where you can tank hydrogen.”

“In about twenty years

from now Sweden could

have, in principle, fossil

fuel free traffic.”

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The three Japanese engineers Takeshi Uchiyamada at Toyota Motor Corporation, Takehisa yaegashi at Toyota Technical Development Corporation and and yuichi Fujii at Panasonic EV Energy have jointly have jointly received the award for their outstanding, goal-oriented and vital contributions to the development of Prius, the world’s first commercial hybrid automobile.

award winner 2006

Two of the award winners were present in Göteborg: Yuichi Fujii, Takehisa Yaegashi.

takeshi uchiyamada, takehisa yaegashi and yuichi fujii


G Day inspired hope

for the future in

Göteborg

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award winner 2007al gore (usa)

For his commitment to increasing public awareness about global warming and the-reby creating the prerequisites for putting an end to the climate crisis.

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”A stop to deforestation and

contributions from rich countries

for the climate measures needed

in developing countries.”

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“Through his belief in mankind and in the common sense in all of us he has become a guru and crusader, giving millions of people hope for the future. “ This was how the jury summed up its motivation for giving Al Gore the Göteborg Award. The glo-bal climate ambassador couldn’t come in the autumn of 2007 so we moved our gala “Long live the planet” to January 2008. Sur-rounded by seven thousand enthusiastic fans in Scandinavium our award winner spoke in Martin Luther King style of hope and threats – and how each one of us can make a difference by acti-vely choosing a healthier lifestyle. It isn’t impossible to stop the climate crisis. “We can,” said Gore.

Earlier he had met and inspired twelve hundred business leaders and politicians from all over West Sweden. They had spent

the entire afternoon participating in seminars on long term solutions to the climate crisis through smart technology, robust action plans and green business strategies. It was an illuminating G Day for a brighter tomorrow!

In 1997 the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol were about to collapse because of resistance from the USA. Then Al Gore stepped in and saved the agreement at the last minute on the conference floor in Kyoto. Now the world once again is faced with the test of strength involved in creating a new climate agreement to last until 2020 and this time demands are set for a 25-40 percent reduction of greenhouse gases, a stop to deforestation and

contributions from rich countries for the climate measures needed in developing countries.

Al Gore doesn’t believe in a quick fix. His own recipe for radical climate politics is described in his book “Our Choice” which was published in November 2009. “Some have criticised Al Gore for exaggerating his analysis of changes in the world climate,” says Karl-Johan Bondeson, who has worked for years as an environmental journalist at Göteborgs-Posten and is one of the writers who has reported on the Göteborg Award through the years for the newspaper.

Bondeson admits that Gore has cabled out a few erroneous facts, mainly regarding Greenland ice.

“But that in no way diminishes his unpreceden-ted efforts to wake us up and make us aware of a matter that will decide the fate of mankind.”


Some people think that Al Gore only recently became interested in the environment but that isn’t true. The award jury presented the fascinating his-tory of the former Vice President’s long commitment to the issue in connection with the award ceremony.

The fact is, he star-ted on this path when he was a teenager and read Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”. It was published in 1962 and exposed the frightening environmental effects of DDT and other pesticides. Much later his sister Nancy, who was a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer only 46 years old. It shook Al, partly because his family farm in Tennessee grew tobacco, and partly because the tobacco industry’s cynical denial of the connection be-tween smoking and cancer was so similar to the oil industry’s contention that burning fossil fuels doesn’t produce global warming.

While studying at Harvard at the end of the ‘60s, one of Gore’s professors convinced him and his fellow students that the growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased the earth’s aver-

age temperature. Yet another tragic event would play a part in changing his world view. In 1989 the Gores’ six year old son was badly injured in a car accident and Al took time out from politics to be by his side.

Pondering how transitory life is and what is truly important Gore was inspired to write the book “Earth in the Balance”, which was published in 1992 in conjuncture with the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In it he presented his Marshall Plan for the world’s

environment with five strategic goals:• stabilizing world population • development and sharing of environmentally

appropriate technologies • new global economy• new generation of international agreements • new global environment consensus

In the autumn of 2009 ideas for a green Marshall Plan were once again presented, this time by the UN Commission for sustainable development but clearly, they weren’t first.

However, the decisive factor that allowed Al Gore to step onto the global stage as mankind’s

global heating must be stopped The world must continue to take the message from Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seriously. Since 1900 the average global temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees. The challenge facing the so-called Copenhagen Agreement is to stop the global warm-up before it exceeds 2 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists call the tip-ping point. If we pass this point the entire climate system may be pushed “over the edge”.

”Since 1900 the average

global temperature has

risen by about 0.8 degrees.”


”The countries and populations

that emit the most have to

accept the greatest burden

for reducing emissions.”

environmental statesman was his film “An Inconve-nient Truth”. It premiered in January 2006 and later received an Oscar. The film and the book with the same name were followed by the Stern Report in the autumn of 2006, a calculation that showed it would only cost one percent of the world’s total GNP to stop global warming. The message made the world realise the grave effects of climate changes on our economy, welfare and ability to root out poverty.

The revenue from the film was dona-ted to The Alliance for Climate Protec-tion, an American grassroots movement. Gore’s Calvary was also formed, a green force with at least a thousand Americans of all ages and walks of life who were trained to inform others about climate change. Gore has also launched Generation Investment Management which invests in companies that through their operations take re-sponsibility for the climate and other major global matters.

The year 2007 was particularly eventful for Al Gore. The climate gala Live Earth was sent on 070707 in TV channels all over the planet, a month later Gore was given the Göteborg Award and in December he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The world must continue to take the message from Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seriously. Since 1900 the average

global temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees. The challenge facing the so-called Copenhagen Agreement is to stop global warming before it exceeds 2 degrees Celsius, which is what the sci-entists call the tipping point. If we pass this point the entire climate system may be pushed “over the edge”, beyond control, resulting in extreme weather, more melting, rising sea levels, drought and floods. This in turn will have dramatic consequences for

poor all over the world, and farther down the road, each and every one of us and our offspring.

There are solutions - but there is no time to loose! The tide of escalating emission curves must be turned and

pushed back by the year 2015. Emissions must then be cut in half by the middle of the century. The countries and populations that emit the most have to accept the greatest burden for reducing emis-sions; EU and the USA ought to manage an 85-90 percent reduction by 2050. Climate measures must be characterised by politics for global justice for-med, for example, in accordance with Greenhouse Development Rights, an ingenious model from the Stockholm Environmental Institute.

In the end challenges always land in our local reality. This is why the Göteborg region’s goal to create a fossil free region by 2030 at the latest is so important!

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al goreGore received the award for his profound commitment to stop-ping the climate crisis through increased awareness about global heating. He marries scientific facts, human perspectives and bold political strategies with an infectious optimism about all that needs to be done in order to steer the world’s development away from disaster.

award winner 2007

Award winner Al Gore accepts the award from the Crown Princess Victoria.


EU will be rolling

on clean wheels

– thanks to West Sweden!

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award winner 2008theo colborn, margot wallström, jan ahlbom, ulf duus

All four award winners have made internationally im-portant and noted efforts to clean up the chemical sludge.

”Foreign chemical substances

affect foetus development

from conception to birth.”

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Tens of thousands of different chemicals are used every day in our modern society. They contribute to our welfare and well being but they also have a number of frightening, and partially unknown, effects on the environment and our health. Removing these threats requires sweeping strategies and science, politics and business have key roles to play.

Professor Theo Colborn, USA, was one of the “chemical” award winners in 2008. She began her career as a pharmacist but later in life her

interest in the environment led her to get a PhD in toxicology. Colborn was one of the first scientists in the world to prove the effects of environmental tox-ins on reproduction systems in birds and mammals – and how their disruption of the human endocrine system risks lower fertility and cancer. She discusses this passionately in her book “Our Stolen Future”. At one of the award seminaries she gave an alarming lecture on how unborn babies can be permanently impaired with injuries such as brain damage.

Talking to Theo Colborn a year later she tells us that she and her colleagues have started the web-site endocrinedisruption.com.

“On the site we try to explain it so that a layman can understand how foreign chemical substances affect foetus development from conception to birth. We have also made a DVD on the wide array of pandemic endocrine disruptions that take a toll

on humans and public finances such as autism, hy-peractivity, children’s diabetes, prostate and breast cancer, Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease…”

Theo, who is 82 years old, and her institute want to start a grassroots movement to stop the emission of endocrine disruptive substances in na-ture. They have lobbied the American Congress for a new law that would give responsibility to a new national health agency with independent scientists.

Colborn has also produced a DVD on hazar-dous chemicals that seep out when natural gas is exploited.

“This is a fast growing industry and it’s practi-cally unregulated in the US, something we need to change immediately,” she states, ready for battle.

Vice-President of the European Commission Mar-got Wallström was another award winner. She was recognised for her tough fight for Reach (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation of Chemicals), EU’s new chemical control which is considered to be the most radical environmental legislature in the world.


In order for a substance to be approved Reach requires the chemical company to prove that it is harmless. The main focus is on chemicals that are persistent (i.e. not biodegradable), toxic and bioac-cumlative (accumu-late in animals and plants). Despite in-tense resistance from the industry Margot Wallström, who was at the time was the Environment Commissioner, managed to get Reach passed as the first step on the road to a sustainable way to control and environmentally adapt the use of chemicals in our society.

“Reach came into force in June last year,” says Ethel Forsberg, General Director of the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate and keynote speaker at the Göteborg Award Ceremony in 2008. “It’s a

gigantic experiment in every member country. The industry is required to produce the knowledge necessary to register the so-called high volume substances. Here in Sweden we work hard to

provide the industry, county councils and municipalities with guidance and inspection education.”

Forsberg considers Sweden one of the most active countries when it comes to listing new dangerous substances for permit testing and restrictions.

“Unfortunately we are the exception in EU. Up to twenty member countries haven’t taken any initiatives of their own.”

Two award winners in 2008 are from West Sweden, environmental engineer Jan Ahlbom and

toxic chemicalsHumans have so far developed about 100,000 different chemical substan-ces. They are used in industry, homes, cars and almost all our everyday pro-ducts. Their purpose is to make our lives more comfortable but the down-side is that they also often have traits that harm plants, animals and nature’s sensitive eco system. We are living with a ticking bomb made of chemicals!

”Results so far have led to new, more

environmentally friendly lubricants,

paint and alkylate petrol for boats.”


toxicologist Ulf Duus. They have been developing methods to reduce the negative effects of chemi-cals in our everyday life since the beginning of the ‘90s and have focused particularly on the Göteborg region. They inventively hook up customers and suppliers and create financial incentives to produce more environmentally adapted and healthy pro-ducts on the market. Results so far have led to new, more environmentally friendly lubricant, paint and alkylate petrol for boats.

In 1994 they spotlighted the carcinogenic high aromatic oils, “HA oils”, in tires with their report “New Tire Tracks”. At the time Europe consumed 250,000 tons of HA oils which contain toxins that can splinter off and spread throughout nature when tires are abraded on roads.

Ahlbom and Duus began working together with manufacturers in Sweden like Continental, AGI and Galaxie that were willing to shift to tires without toxins. The list of tires without HA oils was put on a website and generated an enormous amount of attention, particularly in the media. The Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate drafted a national ban on HA oils but realised it would be toothless. The governments of Sweden and Germany then managed to put the matter on the EU agenda.

Around the same time Ahlbom and Duus were very successful with their project Green Chemi-cals and influential buyers of tires participated in a

seminar in Göteborg on the theme “Change the tire market now”. It was 2004 and by then winter tires in Sweden were practically free from HA oils. Ho-wever, the same did not hold true for summer tires.

Progress in EU was at a temporary standstill but Ahlbom and Duus continued to lobby and insisted that the risk for cancer was grounds for a HA ban. And so it was. The EU parliament made its deci-sion in June 2005 and on 1 January 2010 directive 2005/69 will ban all HA oils in Europe!

An initiative from West Sweden has become a positive force for the nature on our entire continent – and for the health of five hundred million people!

“It feels great!” comment Jan Ahlbom and Ulf Duus.

In the au-tumn of 2009 they received the Maritime

Forum’s prize for their work on Clean Shipping. Among other things, they have developed a pro-curement tool for transportation buyers who want to retain, and thereby favour, the most energy ef-ficient and environmentally friendly shipping firms to carry their oil, container goods or whatever they want to ship.

“Shipping is an important area considering the fact that there are some 100,000 ocean-going cargo ships out there. Not to mention the fact that 80 percent of all goods in the world sail to their desti-nations.

”An initiative from West Sweden has

become a positive force for the nature

on our entire continent – and for the

health of five hundred million people!”

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award winner 2008theo colborn, margot wallström, jan ahlbom and ulf duus

Professor Theo Colborn received the award for her scientific efforts and her active role in raising awareness about the effects of synthetic toxins on the reproduction of birds and mammals as well as on the human endocrine system, including the risk of cancer and reduced fertility.

Margot Wallström received the award for having, during her mandate as the European Commis-sioner for the environment, been one of the key persons behind the formation of REACH, the most progressive legislative instrument for chemical control in the world and one of the most far-reaching environmental legislations in the EU. Environmental engineer Jan Ahlbom and toxicologist Ulf Duus received the award for having connected producers and buyers of chemicals, thereby creating incentives for faster develop-ment of more environmentally friendly products such as fuel for boats, lubricants and car tires.


Sustainable cities

– can Göteborg take

the lead?

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award winner 2009anna kajumulo tibaijuka, enrique peñalosa, sören hermansen

Each one comes from a separate continent and they are, locally and globally, knowledgeable, engaged and impatient doers and ambassadors for one of the most decisive factors for humanity - the battle for sustainable development in the cities and towns around the globe. They have all been active in achieving decisive system changes.

Sustainable cities

– can Göteborg take

the lead?

JOSÃ© FUSTE RAGA/SCANPIx

”These cities represent 75 %

of all energy consumption

and generate 80 percent of

all greenhouse gas emissions.”

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The future of humanity will be decided in the fastest growing cities in the world. Half of the earth’s population live here, on only two percent of the earth’s surface. These cities represent 75 percent of all energy consumption and generate 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.More than half of the hundred largest cities are in Asia, and 15 percent of those are in China. Only six of them are in Europe (Berlin, Rome, London, Madrid, Moscow and St. Petersburg) and three of them are in the US (Chicago, Los Angeles and New york).

More than a million people live in 500 cities and twenty of them have more than ten million inhabitants! Shanghai is the

largest with 15.56 million. Mumbai (Bombay) is next with 13.7 million people or 30,000 per square metre, compared with Stockholm which has 3,300.

Citizens have big expectations that their city will offer quality of life and welfare: a home, a job, something to do in their leisure time, culture, love and happiness.

Unfortunately far too many cities fail to live up to these expectations. Instead they offer up unem-ployment, slums, crowded conditions, bad air, dirty water, poverty, segregation and violence.

This is why, all over the world, action is being taken to meet the situation head on. In the past few years “sustainable cities” has become a central concept. Bill Clinton is heading a project in which 40 of the biggest cities in the world will develop methods to measure the city’s energy consumption

and climate emissions in order to systematically deal with its environmental impact. Strategies and computer programs will then be offered to other cities around the world.

The theme of the Göteborg Award for 2009 was sustainable city regions. It was given to three people who are active locally and globally:

Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka is an UN Under-Secretary-General and The Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, the world organisation’s settlement program. Based on the Millennium Declaration’s goal 2020 to lift 100 million slum inhabitants out of poverty, Tibaijuka is leading work that includes securing water supplies and empowering women to improve their surroundings.

As one of the initiators of Cities in Climate Change Anna Tibaijuka is also advancing the practi-cal climate work being carried out in big cities.

Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá 1998-2001, successfully transformed Colombia’s capital


- one of the most chaotic urban environments in the world with its slums and smog - into a model of sustainable, democratic city planning. Peñalosa reformed mass transit, primarily through ”TransMi-lenio”, a modern, efficient bus-based transit system. He also initiated the construction of the world’s longest bicycle path system and further developed the popular

”ciclovia”, which shuts off vehicles from long stretches of roads every Sun-day between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Both projects are aimed at promoting pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

Peñalosa now travels all over the world holding lectures on his visions and strategies for The Good City.

Sören Hermansen is the primus motor and focal point of Samsö, which with its more than 4,000 inhabitants, won the competition regarding which

Danish island would first become self-sufficient through renewable energy within ten years.

Under Hermansen’s leadership - founded on a grass roots perspective - the work has resulted so far in eleven land-based, and ten ocean-based, wind generators as well as a number of district heating power plants driven by burning hay or wood chips.

Replacing fossil fuelled cars and tractors with biogas, raps oil and electric car technology is already in the pipeline.

Sören Herman-sen was named one of Time Magazine’s 2008 ”He-roes of the Environment”, and is now in the process of spreading his ideas around the world.

And now to Göteborg! On page 112 you will find a summary of what has and is happening in the award’s hometown.

“A number of good things have taken place recently,” says Björn Malbert, professor in design for

the fight for sustainable citiesHalf of humanity is already living in the world’s fastest growing cities and towns. They represent 75 percent of all energy consumption and generate 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. This is why the fight to create more sustainable cities – environmentally and socially – is one of the grea-test challenges in the coming decenniums.

”Vehicles are shut off from long

stretches of roads every Sunday between

7 a.m. and 2 p.m. aimed at promoting

pedestrian and bicycle traffic.”

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sustainable urban development. “But there is still a lot left to do, primarily in transportation, energy con-servation in housing and social segregation before Göteborg will be a decently sustainable city!”

Björn Malbert thinks green development in Sweden is taking longer than necessary. He cites Germany where they began building passive houses years ago and how the country has created a smart marketing system that makes solar panels on roof-tops a profitable investment.

Having said that, Malbert is very pleased right now that Göteborg has become Sweden’s natio-nal centre for sustainable city development! Mist-ra, the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, together with local partners is investing a few hundred million Swedish crowns to get the city and region functioning as an experimental arena for new, environmentally smart construction and traffic solutions, life style changes and more.

Academia and politicians will invite businesses to present their best ideas for sustainable cities. This means new knowledge will emerge from practical work in companies and communities as well as research.

However, it doesn’t start and end with the Gö-teborg region. The centre will offer dialogue and cooperation with other areas in Sweden as well as universities in three major foreign cities: Shanghai, Manchester and Kisumu on Lake Victoria in Kenya. The Swedish International Development Coopera-tion Agency, Sida, would also like to participate with a project in Cape Town.

From Chalmers, one of the academia sites, Björn

Malbert has played the role of coordinator in close collaboration with the University of Gothenburg and other partners.

“In our unit at the institution for architecture we already cooperate with the foreign universities, which sometimes leads to unexpected practical re-sults. For example, recently students discovered that water hyacinths – an environmental problem in Lake Victoria - have such an intense capacity for liquid absorption that they ought to be used in sanitary protection, a product in short supply especially for

poor young women.”The City of Göteborg

and its surroundings have a huge potential to become a role model for sustainabi-lity. Björn Malbert believes

that K2020, the program to extend mass transit, is a good initiative and he is happy that Göteborg will soon have congestion fees intended to reduce envi-ronmental impact.

“However, in the future we have to think and plan much more systematically than we do today,” he says. “In city centre cars must be reduced to a mere “support system” and bow to mass transit, bicy-clists and pedestrians.”

Still, the greatest challenges are social; we have to desegregate city districts. We have to condense the city and we have to live a more judicious mate-rialistic life.

“If we can’t make these changes, we will fail to fix the purely physical environmental measures as well. But I’m an optimist!”

”We have to live a more

judicious materialistic life.”

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anna kajumulo tibaijuka, enrique peñalosa and sören hermansenAnna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN-HABITAT, the world organisation’s settlement program, received the award for her unrelenting work to promote socially and environmentally sustainable cities and towns all over the world. Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá 1998-2001, received

the award for his innovative fight to transform Colombia’s capital- one of the planet’s most chaotic urban environments with its slums and smog - into a model of sustainable, democratic city planning. Sören Hermansen received the award for his inspiring leadership of the Samsö Project, in which the Danish island in ten years became completely self-sufficient on renewable energy through ocean-based wind generators as well as a number of district heating power plants driven by bur-ning hay or wood chips.

award winner 2009


voiCES on ThE GöTEboRG AwARdA number of people have given their perspective on the importance of the Göteborg Award, now and in the future – for Sweden, the region and the city.


margot wallströmvice-president of the european commission The award is both internationally accepted and important for Sweden. It is not just an award for an individual or an organisation, it is a beacon for all of us. The prize promotes a concept of sustainability that forces us to take the future into account and include the rest of the world in our plans and not just put a band-aid on the situation.

karin markidesrector of chalmers university of technology

Since the award was initiated in 2000 it has been very successful in awarding leading in-ternational driving forces with an exciting variety of competences over the years. Chalmers has benefited greatly from cooperating in seminars given in connection with the award ce-remony. We are looking forward to contributing to further developing the Göteborg Award and to placing Göteborg more firmly on the international Sustainability Map – at the same

time as it will strengthen cooperation in the region!

pam fredmanrector of göteborg universityThe major climate and environmental problems of our time demand comprehensive solutions and cross-border cooperation. The award is strengthened by the fact that the winners come from many divergent fields – they are researchers, politicians, innova-tors, local producers, ethical fund managers and creators of public opinion – and this highlights the variety needed in order to achieve sustainable development. I hope that more young, committed researchers will be recognised in the future.

liv landell majoreditorial writer at göteborgs-tidningen (editorial 15 august 2008)

The Göteborg Award jury has that flair for giving high standing to the award. That they beat the Norwegians in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in rewarding Al Gore

a few years ago is not really important, but telling. It’s no coincident that they awarded the engineers at Toyota for their environmental thin-king before anyone else started following the green car trend, or that they gave the award

to two architects who construct passive houses before anyone else had heard about the phenomenon. The Göteborg Award is a step ahead!

voices on the göteborg award

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christina stenbergceo kungsfenan, the swedish seafood awardThe award has proven to be more than a pat on the back to ambitious scientists. Right from the start it has contributed to strengthening the necessary debate on sustainable development. The companies and the city behind the award are active in ways that truly contribute to sustainable development locally, regionally and globally. The award has intellectual credibility and the potential to continue taking responsibility for our global community.

jörgen linder chair of the municipal council (social democrat)

The award is a nice initiative that further strengthens the positive image of Göteborg and the region. It is well-known among businesses and in politics and it has contri-

buted to the city’s environmental development. The construction of passive houses is just one example!

jan hallbergdeputy chair of the municipal executive board (moderate)The award is evidence that Göteborg has made working for an improved environment one of the city’s most important tasks for the future. For the inhabitants of Göteborg it’s a symbol for how high they need to aim in their everyday work for the environment. If we ourselves attain our environmental goals we can also inspire others to contribute to a sustainable development. We decide ourselves if the Göteborg Award will deserve the recognition by the world we hope for!

peter hjörne political chief editor of göteborgs posten

When the Stern report shook the world and the “market and the biotope started marching to the same tune”, as a climate scientist expressed it, the Göteborg Award had already been

around a long time. Göteborg and the founders of the award had shown both insight and foresight with their early recognition of the critical importance of sustainable development. The Göteborg Award is, and can to an even greater extent become, an important ingredient in Göteborg’s identity as an environmentally aware city of the future, a good city to live and

work in and a good city to cooperate with. The award contributes positively to Sweden’s image but at the same time it exhorts us all to work towards sustainable development.

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amanda ahlerup globala gymnasiet, göteborgFew people today are unaware of the negative impact humans have on the environment. We can daily follow debates and well formulated statements on environmental issues. Naturally this dialogue is good for society, but it can be a far stretch between dialogue and taking an active stance. The Göteborg Award is positive because it supports those who work actively for the environment. This is the only way of solving the problem we have created.

leif nilsson md göteborg & co

Today we describe Göteborg as a city of knowledge, tourism and events but this will only be possible if our city also develops in a sustainable way. The Göteborg Award is very

important because it shows that this is our ultimate goal!

göran värmbyworks with business oriented environmental development,

formerly at business region göteborgToday Göteborg is known as one of Europe’s leading cities in sustainable development. The city has sustainable solutions in industry, energy, waste, transportation, city plan-ning and renewable fuels that stand out worldwide. The Göteborg Award has made it

possible to communicate this internationally while allowing the founders of the award – the municipality and a number of companies – to showcase the cooperative spirit that is

one of the most important factors in the success of the award!

jan-eric sundgrensenior vice president public and environmental affairs, volvo It takes time to establish an award like this and so far it’s primarily known in western Sweden. It attracts positive attention to the region and its importance will increase. But the award process should be made clearer – and the award winners should receive even more attention! And why not appoint a scientific committee to be councilors to the jury?

voices on the göteborg award


ThE juRy FoR ThE GöTEboRG AwARd FoR SuSTAinAblE dEvEloPmEnTThe jury works meticulously and systematically for over six months to select the most suitable award winner. Since its start in 2000 the following persons have been jury members:

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stefan edman (chair)Biologist, honorary Doctor of Technology, author, lecturer, political advisor on environmental issues to the previous Prime Minister.

elin erikssonMaster of Science in Engineering, assistant manager of the environmental

performance department at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

lotta götheEcologist, economist, consultant on sustainable development at Ecoplan AB.

lars hallénMaster of Science in Engineering, Chair of LIFE Academy, a global network

academy for training in sustainable development.

russel johnssonFor many years Director for Environmental and Quality Affairs at IKEA.

johan trouvéMaster of Science in Engineering, CEO of West Sweden Chamber for

Commerce and Industry, formerly Environmental Manager for the Schenker Group.

yvonne wallinJournalist, runs her own consulting company which works with marketing and communication primarily in the field of sustainable transportation.

You can read more about the jury members at www.goteborgaward.com.


WHO ARE THE SPONSORS – and how to they see the award? The Göteborg Award would not exist without the generous financial support from Göteborg City and a number of large companies, banks and a pension fund. The sponsors, board and jury meet annually to exchange ideas and find inspiration. In connection with the award ceremony in November the sponsors arrange popular seminars on different sustainability issues that are related to the current award theme and the challenges of the Göteborg region. We asked our sponsors some questions about sustainable development and how they perceive their engagement in the Göteborg Award.

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handelsbanken1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We contribute both directly and indirectly to sustainable development in society through our selec-tion of environmentally oriented funds and other investment products. Environmental responsibility and sustainable operations play an important role in the credits we grant. We also conserve resources in our operations through everyday commitment from our employees and managers. Our system of local offices means short trips to work resulting in low emissions.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?In supporting the Göteborg Award from the start we have contributed to rewarding important achie-vements in sustainable development. The bank, our customers and employees all benefit from this in the long run. Naturally we also hope to win even more customers who share these values so that our business can continue developing. Naturally the region has benefited from the ten years it has spent establishing the Göteborg Award as a brand. It’s part of the region’s ambition to inspire environmental commitment.

second swedish national pension fund – ap21. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society?The assignment the government has given us clearly states that we must consider ethics and the environment when investing without sacrificing a good return.

We naturally integrate sustainability issues in our everyday operations. We are convinced that good returns in the pension funds we manage are dependent on a long-term sustainable environmental action. Financial gains and a good environment are not in opposition, they are the prerequisites for each other.

As for our own internal environmental action, our offices have been environmentally certified by the Göteborg City environmental certification system.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?Sponsoring the important Göteborg Award is our way of showing our engagement in these issues both internally and externally. We also believe that we have learnt more about environmental issues through the network of sponsoring companies, in the award seminars and, of course, from the award winners themselves.

The award puts Göteborg on the map also when it comes to environmental issues. It strengthens Göteborg’s good reputation and shows that we care about the environment.


skf1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? Our business model, “SKF Care”, means that we have a long-term and sustainable perspective in all of our business challenges. We provide products and services that help our customers become more energy efficient. At the same time we reduce the impact on the environment in our own plants. We also want all our employees to feel proud about the company and we are strongly engaged in the local community.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Göteborg Award stimulates system transformations for sustainable development. This is some-thing we want to support. The award also puts the region and Göteborg on the international map. We also see a value in being associated with an award that fills our employees with pride and contributes to the perception that SKF is a citizen and engaged in our society.

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peab1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We reduce energy consumption in two ways; all the housing we build ourselves is low-energy housing (max. 75 kwh/m2 per year) and we conserve energy on our construction sites as well as in our offices. We are phasing out materials hazardous to the environment and replacing them with good alternati-ves. We also have goals for sorting and reducing waste.

The amount of eco-vehicles in the company is on the rise and drivers will receive education in eco-driving. We have also developed a method for analytical road dimensioning that provides a prolonged technical life-span and an improved maintenance strategy (SwePave), which conserves natural resources.

In addition, we participate in city development projects/cooperative efforts that focus on sustainability.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Göteborg Award harmonises with our perspective on environmental issues. Göteborg is very good at climate smart solutions, which is why the new research centre for sustainable development was placed there. The award spotlights all of this and makes it visible even for players outside the region.

nordea1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We have several projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact in our business. For instance, we are currently changing to renewable electricity and introducing automatic night time turn-off of stationary computers.

All the projects are part of a joint initiative: “Ecological footprint”, which has to do with how we run our business in a responsible way, with respect for our customers and interested parties.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Göteborg Award has stimulated business that is in harmony with sustainable development. CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility is at the top of the agenda at Nordea and it has grown in importance ever since the award was introduced. We at Nordea want to be ambassadors for sustainable develop-ment in our region.

peabbostad.se


götaverken miljö ab1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We are a completely cleantech company with unique products for cleaning environmentally hazar-dous emissions and energy recovery. ADIOx® and MercOx are leading products for dioxin and mer-cury separation. ADIOx® has so far been delivered to eighty incineration lines in most parts of the world and it has served to separate large amounts of dioxin and furan. These substances have then been destroyed and thereby taken entirely out of circulation. Flue gas cleaning and energy recovery in connection to waste incineration are two of our specialties.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?Through the award Göteborg and its partner companies can draw attention to interesting stages on the road towards a more sustainable society. The sponsorship shows that progress in technology and business for sustainable development really do make a difference. It strengthens our internal goal orientation and offers a positive exposure of our products. The chance to arrange and invite custo-mers to the cleantech seminar at the 2007 award ceremony was also a real boost. In the long run the award contributes to strengthening the region’s investment in education and research directed towards sustainable city planning and industrial production. This is a good hotbed for the development of commercial cleantech products!

schenker ab1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We are the largest transport company in the country with a domestic fleet of four thousand trucks (Schenker only owns 700 of these, the rest are operated by some 250 road carriers that we cooperate with). We have been working with environmental issues actively and diversely since the 1980s but only recently have they become a defined part of our business strategies. We have created an action program for the climate challenge that covers seven areas, such as more efficient engines and fuel, increased training in eco-driving and greater use of mass transit for cargo. Through this program we should reduce our energy consumption by 16 percent by the year 2012. Schenker is a part of KNEG, an alliance for Climate Neutral Goods Transports (KlimatNeutrala Godstransporter). Some other members are Volvo, Preem, the Swedish National Road Administration and the Centre for Environment and Sustainability in Göteborg. When it comes to renewable techno-logy we have great hopes for hybrid trucks and more bio gas as fuel.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Göteborg Award is important and we hope that it will reach beyond Göteborg, possibly with the support of the government.

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folksam1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? In 2006 Folksam became the first Swedish climate neutral company. This was the result of six years of work mapping and reducing our emissions.• We plant trees in Mexico and Uganda to compensate for our emissions. • We have a tough travel policy that steers employees to travel by train. • Our company cars must meet with rigid safety and environmental demands. • We repair buildings for SEK 800 million and cars for SEK 1.2 billion each year. • We have tough environmental demands on the some 200 construction contractors and 1,200 car

repair shops that we have agreements with. • We publish “Folksam’s Guide to Environmental Construction” (Folksams Byggmiljöguide) contain-

ing an environmental assessment of a number of construction products. We want the repairs we make to be as beneficial as possible for the environment.

• The electricity used in all properties and offices owned by Folksam comes from wind power. • We test outdoor paint for wood facades in order to be able to provide house owners with good

advice when choosing a paint (both regarding the environment and the quality).

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?It feels good to be able to sponsor the important Göteborg Award, Sweden’s only major environmental award. The Göteborg region is also the most active when it comes to environmental issues.


göteborg cityIn 1996 the city adopted a ten point environmental policy focused on economising, green procure-ment and networking. Today a large part of Göteborg is heated with waste heat from, among others, the industry (only 0.5 % of heating comes from oil!). 25 percent of heating and electricity for 70,000 homes is produced by environmentally friendly waste incineration (the equivalent of 125,000 tons of oil). In Göteborg there are also gas-based power plants (electricity and heat). The district heating system has been enlarged substantially. We also invest in energy conservation.

The city runs five large recycling centres, 21 civic amenity sites and 345 recycling stations. The city has its own fleet of eco-vehicles, produces bio gas from sewage water, is constructing a network for methane fuelling stations, promotes bike and car pools, climate neutral goods transports and a clean-shipping project in the Göteborg harbour where ships can plug into the city’s electricity (so they can turn their engines off). Every 24 hours, 25 train shuttles arrive from all over the country carrying goods to the harbour. Göteborg is a pioneer when it comes to environmental zones for heavy vehicles and procuring environmentally friendly buses and contracting machines. “On your own two feet” is a project in which children and teenagers are encouraged to walk or bicycle to and from school in order to strengthen their health and help the environment.

Project Green Chemistry has cleaned up the chemical environment, particularly in the formerly highly polluted Hisingen area. Passive houses and low energy hou-sing are under construction. Congestion fees intended to reduce environmental impact will probably be introduced in 2013.

eldan recycling ab1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? We continuously work to improve our production methods in our search for the most energy efficient ones. Since more than 98 percent of our production is destined for export we also try to make trans-portation as efficient as possible through smart packaging, but also by using ships whenever possible.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Göteborg Award is important for us from an international perspective. Scandinavia has a good reputation in environmental issues and cutting edge technology. This is spotlighted through the en-vironmental award! Eldan Recycling benefits indirectly from sponsoring the award since we become participants in an exclusive group of companies with environmental strategies. All the work that is being done in this area is positive and therefore we see our participation in this context as an important step in spreading environmental thinking in the region and all over the world.

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carl bennet abCarl Bennet AB acts through our respective companies Getinge, Lifco and Elanders. These companies work individually with sustainability.


elanders ab1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? Elanders works determindly on a daily basis with environmental and quality management striving to improve processes, production methods and products. Thanks to our ability to produce more rapidly and closer to end-users we always offer production methods with a lesser environmental impact but lower distribution and storage costs, which is both economical and good for the environment.

2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?Our commitment to the Göteborg Award underlines our attitude towards sustainable development in general, and environmental issues in particular. We want our employees to feel proud about our invol-vement and we want our customers to see us as a strong partner that can help them do their share. It is incredibly inspiring to be a part of a constructive network that does so much for our sustainability, locally and globally.

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kf - the swedish cooperative union1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? The consumer co-operative is owned by over 3 million members and its mission is to create economic benefits and enable its members, through their consumption, to contribute towards sustainable development for people and the environment. We try to live up to our business concept by carrying a range of products that makes sustainable consumption possible and by managing our organisation and supermarkets responsibly. We have Sweden’s largest selection of ecological and Fairtrade products and we have recently started using trains to transport a lot of our goods in order to reduce our impact on the climate. 2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?Our 100,000 members in Göteborg and the large number of people employed in our Coop supermar-kets means we have a big local presence. With our mission it’s natural for us to contribute to the award. The award clearly shows Göteborg’s ambition to lead the environmental field.

stena metall1. how do you contribute to a more sustainable development in society? Every year Stena’s 250 branches and facilities handle vast amounts of iron, metal, paper, plastic, hazardous waste and electronics in ten European countries. The Group works continuously on new solutions, our unique platform of R&D projects and more efficient production and logistics. 2. what importance does the göteborg award have for you as a sponsor – and for the region?The Group’s recycling contributes to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by eight million tons every year – which corresponds to all the emissions from 1.4 million Swedes. This is how much emissions would have increased if the material hadn’t been recycled and instead new material was produced from mines, oil, forests etc. Our operations destroy enormous amounts of environmentally hazardous substances with methods that are safe for the environment.

Sponsor 2001-2008.

www.goteborgaward.com

www.goteborg.se (Göteborgs city)

www.chalmers.se/gmv

www.naturvardsverket.se

www.regeringen.se

www.mistra.org

www.ekocentrum.se

www.universeum.se

www.naturskyddsforeningen.se

www.wwf.se

www.krav.se

www.fsc-sverige.se

www.grkom.se

www.swentec.se

www.vgregion.se

www.passivhuscentrum.se

Would you like to learn

more - useful links

you can directly Google the names of sponsoring companies such as sKF, the second swedish National Pension Fund and elanders.

It is also possible to Google some of the themes from the book such as hybrid vehicles.


Text: Stefan Edman

Energy smart houses, non-toxic car tires, green economies, hybrid cars, Fairtrade coffee, Al Gore, Margot Wallström...

The Göteborg Award for Sustainable Development – one of Sweden’s largest international awards of its kind – has in its first ten years recognised ex-citing people, science, technology and everyday changes that contribute to giving hope for the fu-ture, both for the environment and for human be-ings, locally and globally.

you can read about the award, winners and their current undertakings in this easily read, richly illustrated book.

winning sustainable development

Documents

gteborg awardthe gteborg

gteborg award association

award gteborg city

award winner selection

continued development

stefan edman3

swedens largest awards

vice chair