Overview
The annual energy supply in Sweden amounts to approximately 612 TWh. Fossil fuels, such as crude oil, natural gas and coal, used by the transportation and refinery sectors, account for almost 35% of the current supply, followed by biofuels, nuclear power and hydropower. Renewable energy plays an increasingly important role in the Swedish energy system, and currently contributes to 37% of the overall energy supply.
The main sources for electricity in Sweden are hydropower and nuclear power, accounting for 80% of the supply. The remaining 20% is covered by biofuels, wind power, conventional thermal power plants, and a small amount of photovoltaic and geothermal power.
Following the EU directives and regulations, Sweden is concentrating on improving and establishing long-term conditions for wider use of renewable energy resources, including new plant construction, R&D, incentives funding and industry harmonization. The government is committed to work on breaking the dependence on fossil fuels by 2020, and inclined to invest in renewable energy and power generation research and development to enable and alleviate the expanded use of bio-fuels and other renewable energy sources for electricity, heat and transportation.
Best Prospects/Services
Equipment and plant technology for the upgrade of nuclear, hydropower and CHP plants; wind power turbine technology and spare parts; solar, photovoltaic and geothermal technologies; biomass processing technology; natural gas network technology and power grid infrastructure; smart grid infrastructure and IT solutions, renewable vehicle fuel production technologies and electric vehicle/battery/infrastructure technologies.
Opportunities
In order to meet both the country specific and EU mandated climate change goals, Sweden needs to expand wind, solar and geothermal power production, further improve its biomass utilization and validate new technologies that enable efficient and cost-effective biofuel/electric vehicle production. U.S. companies can provide world-leading product and technologies within many of these areas and have good opportunities in Sweden for cooperation and technology exchange.
Sweden has three nuclear power plants with 10 reactors (both pressurized and boiling water) and together these plants are to account for 1-3 of the electricity production, but lately, an average of only 5 reactors have been in use due to service stops and minor malfunctions. All the plants are in the process of upgrading their reactors and this provides god opportunities for U.S. companies with the latest nuclear technologies.
