(Infographic from The Geographer Online)
The news here is mesmerized by the Eurovision song contest. My wife and I went to a friend’s Eurovision watch party once. We weren’t entranced, possibly too sober to latch onto the vibe. It’s often more about politics than about music. This year is shaping up as an example of that.
But the news repeatedly mentions contestants are in Malmö, Sweden. What’s special about that place, other than hosting Eurovision this year?
It’s doing what urban centers around the world should be doing.
Whenever I get into serious discussions with people who want to put sustainable energy systems in place, Malmö comes up as a premier example. The city expects to comply with the Paris accords by 2030, achieving carbon neutrality 20 years ahead of schedule. It’s the third largest city in Sweden, so we are not talking about a small-scale proof of concept. Click here for a more comprehensive look at how they are doing this.
Several years ago I was involved in an effort to get something along these lines going in the UK. To our surprise, economic modeling showed us Malmö is a starting point. It isn’t necessarily the end game.
If you’re starting from scratch, doing even better is possible—and economically more productive for all parties. It doesn’t have to be done on the scale of an entire city. The economics work even for new-build housing or commercial developments of a relatively modest size.
However, the economic model is oriented toward long term performance. Parties would get lower profit margins but over a long period. The total gain would eclipse the gain they make doing business as usual now. Making the overall environmental footprint negligible could be presented as a side benefit—focusing on how much better the money would turn out was the only way to get anybody on board in a capitalistic society.
We almost got it all together once. Then the key party saw a short term opportunity that appeared to offer a higher percentage financial gain faster. Such a shiny new thing easily pushes aside a much larger profit that continues over a long haul. Their investment is now a gutted wonder producing only expenses with zero revenue, and the structure formed for the sustainable push fell apart.
For obvious reasons I can’t tell you all the details of what made our economic model tick. Updating it to account for radical changes in prices over the years would take a lot of work. But I look at all the attention on Malmö this week and wish some of the news would talk about the extraordinary work the city has been doing on sustainability. Our model for the UK was oriented toward making the huge push for new-build developments here provide more comfort for comparable or less money with greatly reduced environmental impact. Theirs is turning an entire existing city into an example of how to run a city without wrecking the Earth.
Sing us a song about that!