Vattenfall

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Vattenfall is a Swedish energy company and one of the leading energy producers in Northern Europe. The name Vattenfall is Swedish for waterfall, and is an abbreviation of its original name, Royal Waterfall Board (Kungliga Vattenfallstyrelsen).

Production resources for hydroelectric power is mainly located in Northern Sweden, nuclear power north of Stockholm at Forsmark and gas and coal based power in Germany and Poland. Vattenfall is wholly owned by the Swedish government.

Since the late 1990s, Vattenfall has used its operating profit, stemming primarily from its Swedish hydropower facilities, to expand in especially Germany and Poland. The strategy has involved the acquisition of multiple brown coal fired power plants. This has been highly controversial in Sweden due to the status of brown coal as one of the least environmentally friendly alternatives for generating electricity. In addition, brown coal is strip mined in a process that sometimes forces communities to relocate as mining fields expand. [1]

Vattenfall however promotes itself as being on the cutting edge of global energy preservation, which they layed out in an initiative to lower global carbon dioxide emissions. During the year 2006 President and CEO of Vattenfall, Lars G Josefsson, introduced "global burden-sharing" during a presentation at the United Nations. This initiative is intended to provide flexibility between developing and developed nations (report available from Vattenfall: [2]).

[edit] Subsidiary Companies

• Biq Location Development and Real Estate Services

[edit] See also

• List of Swedish companies
• List of Swedish government enterprises
• European Transmission System Operators

[edit] External links

• Vattenfall - Official site
• Yahoo! - Vattenfall AB Company Profile
• Biq Location Development and Real Estate Services - Mangement and marketing of industrial space