Many companies that try to build windmills in Sweden meet resistance from local population.

Universal Wind AB had to wait 11 years to get their needed permissions to build three windmills outside Lund. I can only imagine how frustrating that must feel. The reason people oppose the windmills are twofold, firstly they think they look ugly, and secondly they think think they are distracting.

I can agree with them beeing distracting, they do emit noise and they cast a dynamic shadow. But in my opinion they're beautiful. A testament to our engineering skills and a symbol of hope for the post oil era.

Let's face it, we will run out of oil, and when that happens our need for electricity will go up since part of the transportation fleet will use electricity as their fuel.

To create that extra electricity Sweden will have to either start burning coal, build more nuclear power plants or go for renewable energy sources such as wind and wave power. Sweden is located too far north for solar energy to be of any real use.

Coal as you know releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide when burned, and Sweden is required to lower it's emissions of carbon dioxide. Coal is not a feasible solution.

Nuclear power has both strong supporters and strong opposers in Sweden. There is no real final waste storage in place, and the security at Swedish nuclear plants has been proven over and over again to be very low. Also uranium is a non-renewable resource, the price of uranium has gone up over the last decade and is expected to continue to go up at an even faster rate.

So when Swedes oppose the building of windmills and appeal decision makers plans and thereby stall building of windmills for more than a decade they are only shooting themselves in their feet.