Contributing to a sustainable community is at major assignment. Can you tell us a little more?
- CSR — Corporate Social Responsibility — have been buzzwords for a long while, but they describe something that will become all the more important in the future. One way of working with CSR is to raise the level of awareness at the end customer.

Göteborg Energi is a great believer in involving the end customer in its energy purchases to raise awareness about sources and prices alike. For example, these days you can become a share holder in a wind power company —  Göteborg Energi. Anders feels that in the future more and more households will exercise control over their own energy generation e.g. via wind turbines or solar cells. Solar cells have great potential according to Anders, and his answer to my question about us having too little sunshine here in Sweden is no. The issue is rather one of storage and a lot still remains to be done in this field.

This leads us to electricity generation and smart grids. At Göteborg Energi it´s important that electricity, just like everything else, to a great extent comes from renewable sources — in this case the chief source is wind power Göteborg Energi is investing heavily in wind power and it became clear just recently that the company will build Sweden´s biggest wind farm on the southern tip of Risholmen at Arendal. Construction is planned for start during the winter/spring of 2011/2012. The wind farm will have an estimated annual production of 15,000 MWh.

You´ve erected a number of charging points around town, the last two in November — what´s your opinion about this when there are not too many electric cars yet?
We believe in electric cars. “But when...it´s like the chicken and the egg," says Anders. “What came first, the car or the infrastructure?" When electric cars arrive the infrastructure must be in place, and we have no wish to be some kind of bottleneck that restricts electric cars when they do arrive. We believe in this trend and we want to be at the leading edge regarding products and services, so this is an important area for us.

Norway has built a battery charging infrastructure for electric cars that is free. What do you think abut that?
It´s important that we charge money for the electricity. The way I see it there are two methods we can work with — expensive inductive charging or cheap home charging. But the future is in services, according to Anders. We must develop different price alternatives, offer electrical storage and services around grid utilization.

Energy is an alternative fuel of the future, but you are also investing in gas.
Yes. If we look at the automotive industry we´re working above all along two different lines — electricity and gas. They both have a place in a sustainable society. We pay a lot of attention to the transport sector and the need to make the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy for vehicle power. We´re aiming at resource-efficient solutions and focusing on biogas and renewable electricity. Out biggest R&D project is about making biogas from forestry waste through gasification.

Biogas is still a relatively minor vehicle fuel; what´s your opinion about it?
Biogas is tomorrow´s vehicle fuel. It can be extracted from all sorts of organic waste. We are actively searching for raw materials that can be used for biogas production and today there are already a number of biogas plants. We are also actively participating in a number of projects involved in developing biogas. One example I can mention is GoBiGas (Gothenburg Biomass Gasification Project), which is Göteborg Energi´s biggest investment in the production of biogas. It produces biogas from the gasification of biofuel and forestry waste. We estimate that by 2010 we will be delivering biogas equivalent to 1 TWh which corresponds to around 30 percent of today´s deliveries in Gothenburg, or the fuel for 100,000 cars.

Is hydrogen something you´re looking at?
No. Hydrogen is not on our strategic agenda today. Göteborg Energi is not just a conventional energy company, but one that wants to play a bigger role in contributing to a sustainable society. Balancing our public duties with a need to be competitive is an assignment that Göteborg Energi must perform with constant care and attention. We´ve experienced a few very tough years with a great deal of unrest and articles about the executive management, but now the company wants to put all this behind it and focus on what we are here to do. Anders Ådahl is passionate about what he does — creating, improving and contributing long-term energy solutions for the city. The company has a lot of confidence to re-establish, but the will and the ability are there, and under new leadership it is on the right track.