Integrated Regional Energy Analysis for the Island of Gotland, Sweden

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Abstract
This paper presents a methodology which emphasizes the use of energy and energy concepts for threading together the activities of economic and ecological systems into a common regional framework. A number of quantitative highlights are presented which resulted from a rather large regional-systems study of the island of Gotland, Sweden. In particular, energy and economic flows are quantified for a number of activities including industrial sectors, forestry, agriculture, and fisheries. An important aim of the study was to make explicit the coupling between the renewable energy flows in the natural ecosystems and the fuels and electricity flows in the economic system. To this end analyses were made of the Baltic ecosystem, the Gotland coastal system, the forest system, and the agriculture and other terrestrial ecosystems. Some estimate is made of the potential for renewable energy technologies on the island as well as of the work which is currently expended by renewable energies through natural processes.