Vattenfall

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Vattenfall AB
Type Government enterprise
Industry Electric utility
Founded 1909 as Kungliga Vattenfallsstyrelsen
Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden
Key people Øystein Løseth (President and CEO)
Products Electricity generation, transmission and sales
Revenue

▲15.0 billion euros (2009)[dated info]

▲24.957 billion USD[1]
Employees 38,179 FTE[2] (2010)
Website www.vattenfall.com

Vattenfall is a Swedish power company, wholly owned by the Swedish government. Beyond Sweden, the company generates power in Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

The company's name is Swedish for "waterfall," and is an abbreviation of its original name, Royal Waterfall Board (Kungliga Vattenfallstyrelsen).

Contents

History [edit]

[icon] This section requires expansion. (September 2012)

Vattenfall was founded in 1909[3] as a state-owned enterprise in Sweden. From its founding until the mid-1970s, Vattenfall's business was largely restricted to Sweden, with a focus on hydroelectric power generation. Only in 1974 did the company begin to build nuclear reactors in Sweden (the Ringhals 1 and 2 reactors), eventually owning seven of Sweden's 12 reactors. In 1992, Vattenfall was reformed as the limited liability company Vattenfall AB.

In the years 1990 through 2009, Vattenfall expanded considerably (especially into Germany and Poland), acquiring stakes in Hämeen Sähkö (1996), HEW (1999, 25.1% stake from the city of Hamburg), the Polish heat production company EW (2000, 55% stake), Elsam A/S (2005, 35.3% stake), and Nuon (2009, 49% stake).[3][4] In 2002 Vattenfall AB and its acquisitions were incorporated as Vattenfall Europe AG,[3] making it the third-largest electricity producer in Germany.[3]

Expansion beyond Sweden [edit]

Vattenfall in Pruszków, Poland.

In 2006, Vattenfall began production of the pilot Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plant at Schwarze Pumpe, Germany. In 2007, the Lillgrund Wind Farm in Denmark was commissioned and began delivering electricity.

Vattenfall has power generation branches in Sweden, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland; in Germany, Vattenfall is the electric utility for the states of Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Saxony.

Vattenfall has consulting business in 90 countries around the world via Vattenfall Power Consultant.[citation needed]

Generation [edit]

As of 2009,[dated info] Vattenfall generates electricity from fossil fuels (52%), nuclear power (25%), hydropower (21%), and "other sources" (wind power, biomass, waste) (2%).[2]

Some of Vattenfall's most notable power generation plants include the 110 MW Lillgrund Wind Farm off the coast of Malmö, Sweden, the world's largest[5] offshore wind farm at Thanet, UK, the nuclear reactors Brunsbuttel Nuclear Power Plant (67% ownership), Krummel Nuclear Power Plant (50% ownership), Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant (20% ownership) in Germany, and the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant and Ringhals Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden.

Vattenfall also owns a number of coal-fired power stations, including the Jänschwalde Power Station, the Boxberg Power Station, the Lippendorf Power Station (owned in part), the Schwarze Pumpe Power Station, and the Rostock Power Station (owned in part).

Vattenfall also operates biomass, coal-fired, and other power plants in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Carbon intensity [edit]

See also: List of European power companies by carbon intensity
 This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)
Year Electricity
Production (TWh)		 Emission
(Gt CO2)		 kg CO2
/MWh		 Sweden
(TWh)		 kg CO2
/MWh
2002 166 68.28 411
2003 160 71.47 448
2004 174 69.97 403
2005 175 71.77 410 86.7 5.8[6]
2006 165 74.5 450
2007 184 84.5 459
2008 178 81.72 459
2009 175 79.05 452
2010
2011

Car seatbelt [edit]

The development of the safety belt is often incorrectly credited to Saab or Volvo. Fatal car accidents were rapidly increasing in Sweden during the 1950s. When a study at Vattenfall of accidents among employees revealed that the majority of casualties came from car accidents, two Vattenfall engineers (Bengt Odelgard and Per-Olof Weman) started to develop the safety belt. Their work set the standard for safety belts in Swedish cars and was presented to Volvo in the late 1950s.[7]

Environmental initiatives [edit]

Since 2001, Vattenfall has been working on developing methods for capturing CO2 from large coal-fired power plants and storing it underground. In September 2008, Vattenfall commissioned the world's first oxyfuel pilot plant,[8] including CCS – Carbon capture and storage. The pilot plant is located in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany and uses oxyfuel technology to capture carbon dioxide from coal combustion. Vattenfall has also started investigations for converting one existing CHP plant block at Nordjyllandsvaerket to a CCS demonstration plant.[9]

Vattenfall has set a goal of reducing the carbon intensity of its operations by 50% by the year 2030.[10] In 2007, Vattenfall and McKinsey & Company conducted a study to create a global GHG-abatement database. In January 2009, McKinsey launched a second and updated edition of this study, entitled "Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy".[11]

Vattenfall's other environmental projects include:

  • The expanded use of biomass at the Midtfyn plant in the Danish city of Odense, where construction of a new straw-fired co-generation 35 MW (plus 84 MW heat) boiler is in progress.
  • The conversion of the Amager coal-fired plant in Copenhagen to a straw-fired plant. Additional plants are being converted and upgraded in Sweden and Finland to increase the usage of biomass fuels and reduce the use of fossil fuels.
  • Tidal power technologies being tested on the coasts of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Ireland. Vattenfall is also assessing several other ocean energy technologies, such as salinity power and marine current technologies. In December 2009, Vattenfall announced a joint-venture with Scottish company Pelamis Wave Power to develop a 20 MW wave power project off the coast of Shetland, Scotland. The project will use 26 Pelamis P2 machines.[12]
  • In southern Germany, Vattenfall has a project in progress aimed at developing technology for drying lignite prior to combustion. By burning pre-dried lignite, the plant's operating efficiency can be increased and therefore save energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.[13] Estimations are that the technology will be ready for full-scale demonstrations within 10 years.[14]

Vattenfall aims to be a climate-neutral company by 2050.[15] Achieving this goal will require the reduction in CO2 emissions from existing operations as well as dramatic increases in generation of electricity with low-CO2 intensity.

Corporate social responsibility [edit]

Vattenfall office building in Stockholm.

Vattenfall sponsorship covers many sports, cultural, humanitarian and environmental initiatives. In 2008, Vattenfall spent SEK 195 million on voluntary contributions, including donations.[16] Corporate initiatives include:

  • A partnership with the National Geographic Society designed to have two main elements – a pan-European school competition and a multi-media partnership to educate students about climate change.[17]
  • Sponsorship of The World Childhood Foundation,[18] the humanitarian organization working to defend the rights of the child and to promote better living conditions for vulnerable and exploited children at risk across the world. The World Childhood Foundation was founded in 1999 by H. M. Queen Silvia of Sweden.[19]
  • Sponsorship of Clean Up the World in Poland, a community-based environmental campaign[20]
  • National partner for the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics Berlin 2009. Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin, presented Vattenfall as a partner for the World Championships in Athletics and the state of Berlin.[21]

Criticism [edit]

Unbalanced scales.svg
 This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (September 2012)

Vattenfall's expansion strategy has involved the acquisition of multiple brown coal fired power plants, which has been highly controversial in Sweden due to the fact that brown coal is among the dirtiest forms of electricity generation. In addition, brown coal is strip mined in a process that sometimes forces communities to relocate as mining fields expand.[22]

According to Greenpeace, Vattenfall’s coal-fired power plants account for more than twice as much CO₂-emissions as the rest of Sweden combined, and, if counting their Swedish-owned but foreign-located plants as Swedish, would bring Sweden up to fourth most CO₂-emitting country, counting per capita.

In May 2009, Vattenfall was voted the winner of the 2009 Climate Greenwash Awards for "its mastery of spin on climate change, portraying itself as a climate champion while lobbying to continue business as usual, using coal, nuclear power, and pseudo-solutions such as agrofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS)." [2][citation needed] Vattenfall owns four of the dirty thirty most polluting power stations in Europe.

The first fire in the transformer of the nuclear power plant Krümmel (part owned with E.ON) in 2007 forced a closure of the power plant for over two years, while a short circuit in July 2009 in another transformer led to another closure. Due to these incidents the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, Peter Harry Carstensen announced that this will be "letzter Versuch" (their last try) before complete closure of the facility.[23]

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Global 500 for 2009 from CNNMoney
  2. ^ a b "Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2010". Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
  3. ^ a b c d "Group History". Retrieved 2011-06-22. 
  4. ^ "Vattenfall - press release". Cision Wire. Retrieved 2009-02-23. 
  5. ^ MacAlister, Terry (23 September 2010). "British firms miss out as world's biggest offshore windfarm opens off UK coast". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-09-23. 
  6. ^ http://www.vattenfall.com/en/file/2005-LifeCycleAssessment_8459810.pdf
  7. ^ Andriasson, Rune; Claes-Gvran Bdckstrvm (2000.). The Seat Belt : Swedish Research and Development for Global Automotive Safety. Stockholm: Kulturverdskommittin Vattenfall AB. p. 9. ISBN 91-630-9389-8. 
  8. ^ Jha, Alok (2008-09-05). "World's first carbon capture pilot fires up clean-coal advocates". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-27. 
  9. ^ "CCS - the first step towards clean coal power". Vattenfall. 2009. 
  10. ^ Vattenfall (May 2011). "Environment". Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
  11. ^ "Pathways to a low carbon economy". McKinsey. January 2009. 
  12. ^ "Energy pairing on the crest of a wave". BBC News. 2009-12-16. Retrieved 2009-12-16. 
  13. ^ Gollakota, Dr Sal; Bullinger, Charles (1 July 2007). "Lignite Drying: New Coal-Drying Technology Promises Higher Efficiency Plus Lower Costs and Emissions". Coal Power. 
  14. ^ "Unique process develops more efficient lignite". Vattenfall. 3 August 2011. 
  15. ^ Martin LaMonica (May 2011). "Swedish utility targets carbon-neutral electricity". news.cnet.com. Retrieved 2011-06-22. 
  16. ^ http://report.vattenfall.com/csrreport2008/Menu/Governance+and+CSR+management/Stakeholder+engagement+4.16-17/Stakeholder+engagement+4.16-17/?keywords=195%20million
  17. ^ http://www.ngceurope.com/combatclimatechange/
  18. ^ http://www.childhood.org/eng/pages.asp?r_id=14259[dead link]
  19. ^ "Sveriges Kungahus". RoyalCourt.se. 2012-09-16. Retrieved 2012-09-22. 
  20. ^ "Clean Up The World". Cleanup.org.au. Retrieved 2012-09-22. 
  21. ^ http://www.berlin2009.org/75-1-newsview.html?nid=153&npid=1
  22. ^ (Swedish) http://www.etc.se/artikel/9575/vattenfall-aer-sveriges-stoersta-miljoebov
  23. ^ http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kruemmel144.html[dead link]

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vattenfall


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