When the Swedish government announced that the country would stop using oil by 2020, it was clear that its leaders were concerned about the environment.

But there was another obvious motivation behind the decision: Sweden has no domestic oil industry, and importing petroleum had become costly.

“And when you don’t have any oil, you get good at not using it,” says Kris Berglund, a University Distinguished Professor of forestry and chemical engineering.

What Sweden does have is plenty of woods—nearly 70 million acres of forestland, from which it makes not just lumber, paper and other wood products, but also fuel and chemicals; a company there called the Sekab Group has made ethanol from a wood-processing byproduct since the 1940s.

And according to Berglund, Michigan—which imports 97 percent of its oil but boasts the fifth-largest forest resource in the United States—could learn a thing or two from the Swedes.

“Our pulp and paper mills don’t make as many value-added derivatives as they could,” says Berglund, who splits his time between Michigan State and Luleå University of Technology (LTU) in northeastern Sweden, just below the Arctic Circle and not far from his grandfather’s hometown.

Berglund is trying to correct that. His research and entrepreneurial endeavors are part of a larger collaborative effort between Sweden and MSU to share ideas about growing a bio-based economy in both countries. In 2007, MSU researchers and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm toured Swedish facilities to get ideas for bringing jobs to the state.

During the tour, Granholm recognized Berglund for his instrumental role in creating a partnership between the Swedish company Chemrec AB and Ohio-based NewPage Corp. to create fuel from an often-discarded waste material at pulp mills—one in Escanaba among them. Making use of the waste could raise a mill’s profits by 30 percent, he says.

He also has helped launch companies in Michigan, Sweden and France that work to replace fossil fuel-based products with alternatives derived from plants and microbes, and is among the lead researchers at a newly announced center for excellence funded by the Swedish government. The center, called Bio4Energy, will conduct research aimed at making sustainable biofuels and will work closely with MSU, Berglund says.

Although Berglund is interested in alternative energy sources, he points out that 15 to 20 percent of the world’s oil is used to make something other than liquid fuel, so he and his colleagues are focused on making commonly used chemicals—normally derived from petroleum—from wood, corn and other biomass.
“It’s very important to recognize that if the ultimate goal is to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, you have to look at the chemical industry, too,” says Ulrika Rova of LTU, a frequent collaborator with Berglund. “A lot of people overlook that.” With a production process that is less greenhouse gas-intensive than petroleum-based products, bio-based chemicals are also less harmful to the planet after they’re produced, according to Berglund.

“This is classic green chemistry,” he says. “It’s not just the process that’s environmentally friendly. It’s the products as well. Their ultimate fate in the environment is not really a problem.”

In one of his latest projects, Berglund is looking for a low-cost way to derive an amino acid called arginine from wood-processing byproducts.

Arginine is “a revolutionary fertilizer formula developed in Sweden,” says Pascal Nzokou, an assistant professor of forestry collaborating with Berglund. “It could be a very big deal, if everything goes well.”

Most fertilizers load the soil with nitrates, which easily leach into nearby water bodies, contributing to algae blooms and robbing lakes and ponds of oxygen. But arginine is positively charged, so it binds to negatively charged soil particles instead of leaching, according to Nzokou. And since it stays put, it doesn’t harm the environment and doesn’t need to be applied as often as common fertilizers.

Trees fertilized with arginine have higher survival rates and grow faster, so it could give a boost to growers of poplars and other fast-growing plants to be converted to biofuels. Nzokou said Christmas tree growers also could raise profits by using the fertilizer.

Berglund, meanwhile, is researching other uses for arginine that could help bring jobs to Michigan. “One of the greatest things about this project is that Kris has a business approach, so he’s immediately looking at creating jobs here,” says Nzokou. “We’re not just doing it as researchers – we’re taking a business approach, too.”

That practical-minded stance is typical of Berglund’s research.

“The ultimate goal is to deploy the technologies we’re developing here and in Sweden,” he says. “We don’t work on products if we don’t know where they’re going to end up. We don’t do the ‘If you build it, they will come’ thing.”