Ex-Swedish PM wins $ 100,000 environmental prize

OSLO, Feb 15 (Reuters) Former Swedish prime minister Goran Persson won a 100,000 dollars environmental award today for his policies during 10 years in office to combat global warming.

The Sophie Prize, an annual environmental award set up in Norway in 1998, was given to Persson for making Sweden ''a leading nation on environmental policy'', the prize jury said.

The jury said Persson's Social Democrats, who lost power to a centre-right coalition in an election last year, set goals beyond the demands of the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to rein in developed nations' usage of fossil fuels.

Persson was prime minister from 1996-2006.

Persson spent heavily on public transport, including railways, and promoted everything from biofuels to renewable energies, the jury said. Sweden now has 60,000 vehicles that can run on biofuels and 672 filling stations.

The annual prize was established by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and his wife, Siri Dannevig. Gaarder wrote the 1990s bestselling philosophy guide for teenagers ''Sophie's World''.

''What we are doing is too little, it's also late,'' Persson said of actions to offset global warming at a news conference with the prize jury. ''But it's not too late.'' Sweden's greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, were 3.5 percent below their 1990 levels in 2004, among the best performers in western Europe.

Persson said he did not know what he would do with the prize money. The award will be presented in Oslo on June 5.

REUTERS SP RK1905