Cohabitation is now widely and socially accepted in the Nordic countries. Legal distinctions between spouses and cohabitants are less and less frequent. This development has probably enticed some cohabitants to believe that they have a legal protection in a similar way as spouses – but they don't. With the exception of Sweden, and to a certain extent Finland, the regulation of cohabitation in the Nordic countries is characterised by non-statutory law and discretionary compensation rules. Litigation in the wake of dissolved cohabitation testifies to a complex and oft en unclear legal situation, where some cohabitants risk leaving a long-term relationship empty-handed.

This book gives an account of the rules on cohabitation in all five Nordic countries. It describes inter alia the regulation concerning property law during cohabitation and on the financial settlement after the dissolution of cohabitation as well as the main features of inheritance law and child rights legislation for cohabitants. The legal developments towards the current state of the law are also described. Against this background the questions is raised whether the current rules in the Nordic countries are capable of solving the problems that arise in this legal context. In a final chapter the book includes suggestions for legal principles for the regulation of cohabitation.

The aim of the book is twofold. It gives an overall legal representation of the rules of cohabitation which can be useful both for lawyers, judges and other legal practitioners. But the discussion of legal policy and suggestions for solutions could be of interest for politicians and lawmakers interested in the Nordic region. Since legal culture and demographics are fairly uniform in the Nordic countries, it is possible to draw fruitful parallels between countries – in this field of law the Nordic countries can learn from each other, but others can also learn from us. The Nordic countries could actually be seen as a test case for different approaches to regulation of cohabitation.

The book is written by a group of Nordic professors including John Asland, University of Oslo; Margareta Brattström, Uppsala University; Göran Lind, Örebro University; Ingrid Lund-Andersen, University of Copenhagen; Anna Singer, Uppsala University; and Tone Sverdrup, University of Oslo. Professor Urpo Kangas, University of Helsinki and Professor Hrefna Friðriksdóttir, University of Iceland have made important contributions to the description of, respectively, Finnish and Icelandic law.

Executive Summary

Renewable energy sources – including biomass, geothermal, ocean, solar, and wind energy, as well as hydropower – have a huge potential to provide energy services for the world. The renewable energy resource base is sufficient to meet several times the present world energy demand and potentially even 10 to 100 times this demand. This chapter includes an in-depth examination of technologies to convert these renewable energy sources to energy carriers that can be used to fulfill our energy needs, including their installed capacity, the amount of energy carriers they produced in 2009, the current state of market and technology development, their economic and financial feasibility in 2009 and in the near future, as well as major issues they may face relative to their sustainability or implementation.

Present uses of renewable energy

Since 1990 the energy provided from renewable sources worldwide has risen at an average rate of nearly 2% a year, but in recent years this rate has increased to about 5% annually (see Figure 11.1.) As a result, the global contribution of renewables has increased from about 74 EJ in 2005 to about 89 EJ in 2009 and represents now 17% of global primary energy supply (528 EJ, see Figure 11.2). Most of this renewable energy comes from the traditional use of biomass (about 39 EJ) and larger-scale hydropower (about 30 EJ), while other renewable technologies provided about 20 EJ.

Executive Summary

Geothermal energy has the potential to provide long-term, secure base-load energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. Accessible geothermal energy from the Earth's interior supplies heat for direct use and to generate electric energy. Climate change is not expected to have any major impacts on the effectiveness of geothermal energy utilization, but the widespread deployment of geothermal energy could play a meaningful role in mitigating climate change. In electricity applications, the commercialization and use of engineered (or enhanced) geothermal systems (EGS) may play a central role in establishing the size of the contribution of geothermal energy to long-term GHG emissions reductions.

The natural replenishment of heat from earth processes and modern reservoir management techniques enable the sustainable use of geothermal energy as a low-emission, renewable resource. With appropriate resource management, the tapped heat from an active reservoir is continuously restored by natural heat production, conduction and convection from surrounding hotter regions, and the extracted geothermal fluids are replenished by natural recharge and by injection of the depleted (cooled) fluids.

Global geothermal technical potential is comparable to global primary energy supply in 2008. For electricity generation, the technical potential of geothermal energy is estimated to be between 118 EJ/yr (to 3 km depth) and 1,109 EJ/yr (to 10 km depth). For direct thermal uses, the technical potential is estimated to range from 10 to 312 EJ/yr. The heat extracted to achieve these technical potentials can be fully or partially replenished over the long term by the continental terrestrial heat flow of 315 EJ/yr at an average flux of 65 mW/m2.