Initially, the best skills were developed within the purification of drinking water and sewage. Later on, waste management, renewable energy production and energy saving, district and house-heating and other relevant fields have become more and more important in the development of different environmental best-practice solutions.
Today, Stockholm and the surrounding areas is Sweden’s centre for environmental R&D. One reason is that local companies, researchers and authorities collaborate closely and share knowledge in various development programmes. Another reason is that Stockholm is the major Scandinavian academic centre, with 80,000 students, 5,500 doctoral candidates, 7,000 researchers and teachers, more than 20 universities and colleges for further education, plus a number of research institutes, scientific academies and research libraries. In fact, a majority of Swedish environment researchers work at three of the main universities and four of the university colleges in the Stockholm region. Some of the most important environment-oriented industry research institutes, such as the Beijer Institute, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and the Stockholm Environment Institute, are located in Stockholm.
The qualified position of Stockholm and its environs as an international research centre for ecology and the environment has been highlighted by the American Institution for Scientific Information (ISI) in their comparison of different universities throughout the world. Their ranking, based on the number of citations from published articles on environmental research, placed the Karolinska Institute ahead of Harvard University.
For further information: www.stockholmbusinessregion.se/upload/Broschyr_rapport_pdf/Sustainable%20nytt%20a070713.pdf