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Swedish minister eyes energy crisis steps, blames German nuclear phase-out

28 points by EvgeniyZh 2y ago

wkat4242 2y ago
Easy to blame someone else. None of this is new, she's had more than enough time to compensate and Sweden is in the EU energy market by choice.
- 708145_ 2y ago
  It is still true what she says. Having an interconnected electricity system is problematic when countries like Germany misbehave by having a horrible energy politics. That said, it would had been better in Sweden if they hadn't phased out nuclear too! There is a electricity shortage in south of Sweden where industries are denied establishing new initiatives.
  - jamesblonde 2y ago
    Sweden has not phased out nuclear. A large portion of electricity generation is still nuclear.
    - 0points 2y ago
      That's revisionistic. Sweden started phasing out nuclear in 1999 and has since closed 6 of 12 reactors. - Barsebäck B1 and B2 was closed in 1999. - Oskarshamn O1 and O2 was closed in 2015 and 2017. - Rinhals R1 and R2 was closed in 2019 and 2020. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraft_i_Sverige#Avveckling_fr%C3%A5n_1999 https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraft_i_Sverige#Avvec...
      - tcfhgj 2y ago
        So they haven't actually phased out nuclear power, just reduced it.
        willvarfar 2y ago
        Or perhaps they haven't been _replacing_ reactors as they reach end of life?
  - willvarfar 2y ago
    There isn't an energy shortage in Sweden? Sweden has an overproduction of energy, it is just generally generated in the north (where the hydro is) and consumed in the south (where the people are). The 'shortage in the south' is just a political lens for explaining the high prices from the introduction of energy zones in 2011. Before then, there was one price for electricity in Sweden and this worked to the benefit of the consumer. Stepping back, do we really want the south to invest in _generating_ electricity? And if so, at what granularity? At the kommun level, or the län? At what point is that granularity ok but the whole-of-Sweden granularity that we had before the privatisation push is not ok?
    - mnky9800n 2y ago
      Does Sweden have a single power grid or is it segmented like Norway?
      - piva00 2y ago
        It's a single power grid but the transmission lines north->south are insufficient to carry all the potential electricity generated by hydro at peak production.
    - guappa 2y ago
      > Sweden has an overproduction of energy Yes, that's because all the industry had to move because of the no energy in sweden.
    - lawn 2y ago
      Even though countries may have a net export it doesn't mean they're always exporting.
  - jillesvangurp 2y ago
    Actually this is a good thing. There's demand for energy so prices go up. This in turn makes investments in energy generation in Sweden more lucrative since they apparently have a lot of energy revenue coming in from abroad to finance more such projects. There are a lot of renewable energy projects in and around Sweden and the wider region. And of course they are actually manufacturing and exporting a lot of wind turbines as well. Wind technology is a substantial part of their economy. There is no energy shortage in Sweden. They can export as little or as much power as they want. But of course with prices being high that means they export a fair bit and that causes prices to rise. Which is causing Sweden to make a lot of money from this business. If they want lower prices locally, they should look at their local energy market, infrastructure, and regulations instead of blaming the Germans for being able to pay market rates for energy to Sweden.
    - queuep 2y ago
      > There is no energy shortage in Sweden. They can export as little or as much power as they want. This statement definitely needs a source. The EU have laws that require 70% of the produces electricity to be on the market. Source, in Swedish: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/om-elmarknaden/export-och-import-av-el/ https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/om-elmarknaden/export-oc...
      - jillesvangurp 2y ago
        It's a net energy exporter; as many sources will confirm.
        piva00 2y ago
        It is but that doesn't help us here in Sweden, we pay the highest bid price for the electricity generated here but being exported. The last government at least put in place windfall taxes to pay us back during the massive cost increase in the first winter after Russia invaded Ukraine. We got compensated a few months later the prices went insane. The current government already said they won't do that, which is rather absurd since a lot of our electricity is generated by Vatenfall, a state company.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  And they can opt out by choice. Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    > Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den. Can you explain?
    - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      Europe got dependent on cheap russian gas. And it escaped into a bubble of irresponsible behaviour, where the idea that economic realities on the ground mattered itself got faded out. Scream loud and en mass that the rain should go up on the streets- and politicans would promise you the rain would go up, by installing ventilation, physics would not apply to the citizen. Now the situation is different, and physics applies once more, everybody is screaming, but reality be a harsh mistress- she careth not for the sobbing.
- MortyWaves 2y ago
  In a similar vein it’s been absolutely nauseating hearing borderline corrupt Conservatives in the UK moaning at every opportunity at the state of the country and its institutions and the idealogical and deliberate decline and underfunding of all of it (including energy). Despite it being entirely their doing from almost 15 years of the Conservative government.
- alecco 2y ago
  But the Swedish government is taking blame for local shutdowns. The previous day her boss (PM) said so. The 4th paragraph reads: "“I realise that nobody is happy when I say that ‘if we hadn't shut down half of nuclear power, we wouldn't have these problems’. But it's true and it needs to be said.”, Kristersson said, referring to the previous Social Democrat-Greens coalition closing several nuclear reactors between 2019 and 2020 as part of a policy shift towards greater reliance on renewable energy sources." The Swedish Green coalition before them also did shutdowns like the German greens did. And now they have to suffer the consequences. Note that a lot of people are very shortsighted and might think "energy prices were better with the previous greens/labour/etc". They need to be reminded the causes of the crisis.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - sigh_again 2y ago
      The Greens had partnered with the SPD from 1998 to 2005 (and then again recently since 2021 but that's no related to the subject). They directly contributed to creating the Energiewende program. Merkel & friends implemented it, but saying the greens just "indicated preference" is utter bullshit. It's also the greens today trying to exclude any nuclear project from benefiting from grants at the European level. The Greens do not get to have their cake and eat it when they are, in fact, directly one of the sources of the current german problem. Those 232g CO2/kWH as I write (and over 700 last week) is exactly what they asked for when they pushed for a full renewable energy grid backed by hopes and dreams.
      - ivan_gammel 2y ago
        > Merkel & friends implemented it Do you mean they are puppets of the Greens and as opposition to red-green government could not reverse policies they have considered harmful? > directly one of the sources of the current german problem From 2005 to 2021 it was Merkel & Co in the government making most of the energy-related decisions, yet you single out Greens as the primary culprits. Why? Did they sign Nord Stream agreements? > It's also the greens today trying to exclude any nuclear project from benefiting from grants at the European level. How not starting any nuclear project now is relevant to the current situation? It’s a strange claim given the time and costs needed to build a single nuclear power plant. It’s would not solve anything in the next 10 years at least, will be the most expensive energy on the market and add a dependency on a external supplier outside of EU (you cannot seriously suggest that we should get our uranium from Africa or Kazakhstan, so it‘s going to be an American one, same terms as LNG?)
- lawn 2y ago
  Enough time? A nuclear reactor takes much longer than she's been at the office to build, and the Germans would still siphon off most of that electricity driving the price high nevertheless. Wind obviously wouldn't solve it (since, you know, the energy prices were so high because the wind didn't blow). The other actual solution would be something drastic like break away from EU energy market, is that what you're suggesting?
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    The more obvious answer would have been to invest in national infrastructure to connect the hydro in the north to the consumers in the south rather than nuclear. Either way, she's responsible. The Germans are not. Their actions are an external factor she should have compensated for.
    - lawn 2y ago
      As others have commented on, it's not enough to just lay new cables and the lack of nuclear energy (or hydro or coal...) in the south is why the energy from the north can't reach the south.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - tcfhgj 2y ago
        A link would be helpful
    - Gud 2y ago
      Ebba Bush Thor has been a proponent of nuclear power investments for a long time. She has only recently come into a position where she can improve the situation. She is not at fault for Swedens disastrous energy politics.
- Xelbair 2y ago
  yeah, extremely so. Especially if the country shut downs their nuclear power plants in middle of energy crisis, while there are laws in place that mandate energy exchange between different EU and EU adjacent countries(Norway). Did they have time to handle it? No, adjusting your grid to be resilient to such bad actors takes more time.
  - tcfhgj 2y ago
    Who shut down nuclear within of an energy crisis?
    - Xelbair 2y ago
      Germany? When war in Ukraine started and sourcing cheap gas has become a problem - energy is is more than just electricity, although some of gas was also used for that. Please, don't tie your economy to cheap gas from one source and try to bring everyone down with you when the access to it is constrained.
      - tcfhgj 2y ago
        No, Germany didn't. They waited until the crisis was over.
Ekaros 2y ago
How hard it is to build North South transfer capacity? I mean intra-Sweden capacity. My understanding is that Finland can buy power from the north and then move it to south effectively... And we don't even produce that power...
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Probably requires many billions of investment that somebody has to budget for and pay for.
- hurril 2y ago
  The problem is that transferring energy like that requires both lines and the ability to receive the energy. Transferring has (large) energy losses, the ability to receive requires a large inertial mass, like the large and heavy turbines of the nuclear power plants. There are/ were plans for a number of different power links, but some of them have been denied because of environmental concerns (I think! please correct me on that.)
  - lawn 2y ago
    This is the answer. It's not as simple as just laying down more cable, and it was a really hard self-own to shut down the nuclear plants in the south without anything to cover for them.
- jsnell 2y ago
  Would building that North-South transfer capacity even help? It seems like the basic mental model here is that it would equalize prices between Northern Sweden and Germany, not between Northern and Southern Sweden. And Germany is quite a bit bigger than Northern Sweden. So what should then happen during these German shortfalls is to move the German prices (and Southern Swedish prices) down by an imperceptible amount, while the Northern Swedish prices go up by a ton.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    As long as north-south capacity is reasonable compared to south-Germany. So it would increase prices somewhat in north, but as long as not all new capacity can be moved to Germany it wouldn't fully match prices.
knorker 2y ago
Would have been a great opportunity to make money then by exporting their own nuclear power... if they hadn't shut a bunch of it down. Then they could have chosen to refund their own consumers, if that's what they wanted.
- alecco 2y ago
  The green coalition governments across the EU are leaving a huge mess behind. De-industrialization at a pace never seen before at peace times. China is happy to fill in the void.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    How is China filling a void in local energy production? Exporting energy over those distances isn't viable. I mean granted, China's push to expand their solar panel production has led to affordable solar panels for a lot of home owners and communities, massively boosting solar / renewable energy adoption to the point that local energy grids are at capacity. Likewise, their push to expand production of batteries and cars has led to an influx of more affordable cars into Europe. But isn't that the wish / goal? More renewable energy, less dependence on petrol and gas and the like? It's just that both the US and Europe didn't invest and scale up as much and as fast as China was able to.
    - alecco 2y ago
      > How is China filling a void in local energy production? China is investing in power generation almost as much as the rest of the world combined. That energy is used by their massive and growing manufacturing industry. Bye bye EU manufacturing like cars. Note China wasn't even a significant exporter of cars just 10 years ago and now they are becoming dominant. Germany and the EU dug their grave. It would be hard to undo the damage now.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      You can export electricity in the form of product that needed electricity to make, like a bike.
Havoc 2y ago
Think must people agree it was a mistake but blaming infra country difference on another country seems a bit much
- mikl 2y ago
  You can say that, but on the power flow maps, it was quite clear. At the same time we were paying ~$1.5 USD for 1 kWh, we were exporting power to Germany (and other energy-unstable countries like Italy). Sure, better energy links inside Sweden could have helped, but part of the reason the price was being bid up so high was the exports to Germany.
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    It is debatable whether higher-capacity interconnects within Sweden can solve this since Germany and neighbouring countries need so much power that any feasible interconnect will be maxed out. A better solution to the problem is to change the electricity regions so that the areas around international interconnects where demand outstrips the supply get their own zones. This way the price on 'the continent' can be decoupled more from the price within Sweden and the extreme price swings and price discrepancies between the north and the rest of the country will be dampened. Swedish customers living within the new regions can get government support to reduce the impact of export pricing without those supports being needed for the current large zones (III and IV being mostly affected).
willvarfar 2y ago
This blame game is all about supporting current political narratives about nuclear power etc. It's not really about the energy crisis. Sweden's energy mess is all about 'free markets'. Back in the old days the state-run energy companies in Sweden produced an overabundance of electricity, mostly from hydro, making Sweden one of the cheapest electricity countries in the world. It was really common to replace wood burners with direct electric radiators in old houses across Sweden. Then the British conservative party (equiv to the current Swedish administration who the article is about), heavily into privatisation, started selling the public utilities. One thing they did was split network ownership from supplier, so you have one company owning trains and another owning track, and the same for electric net vs generation etc. This created a kind of artificial market, because you can't actually choose with your feet what company has power lines to your house etc. So they invented energy markets and mock auctions and things. Of course in hindsight all those privatisation thingies are no longer popular. But at the time the rest of Europe thought 'oh that's a good idea!' Within Sweden the electricity is generally generated in the north and consumed in the south and the socialist governments with their nationalised utilitieshad a fixed cost in the whole country. Interestingly it was the Danes who complained because they border the south of Sweden and can't generate electricity nearly so cheaply so the cheap cost of Swedish electricity was 'unfair competition'. In 2011 the Swedes had to scrap their fixed one-price policy and introduce 'energy zones' that get increasingly more expensive as you approach Denmark. Fast forward to today and we have Sweden producing more energy than it consumes, but the utility companies get more money from selling that abroad than at home, meaning the Swedes have to buy their electricity from abroad! We basically logically from a market perspective have electricty flowing out of Sweden to be sold by the utility companies and then back into Sweden to be consumed by households. And we wonder why there is another winter fuel price shock warning in the offing!
- hurril 2y ago
  Which privatisations are the cause of this energy conundrum?
  - willvarfar 2y ago
    Perhaps we can spin the question around: Can anyone name a public utility that was privatised in western Europe and for which a clear case can be made that it was a good thing to do (from the perspective of the country and the public)?
wewxjfq 2y ago
Title is misleading. She criticizes Swedish energy policy. Her gripe with Germany is that they only have one price zone.
- locallost 2y ago
  So it's clickbait about a polarizing issue of nuclear. In that case this is actually a fair criticism. There is a lot of talk within Germany that this should change, and there should be multiple zones. A lot here means "people in the energy business have talked about it for some time". I believe the northern states have already requested it, but states like Bayern are very much against. The main issue is that on occasion the markets get out of whack, the price is cheap because a lot of renewable energy is produced in the north, but there isn't enough capacity to transport it to the south. There they then have to fire up e.g. coal plants but this gets paid with other mechanisms and doesn't affect the price. At the same time they refuse to invest in grid upgrades, so they have low transmission costs as well, and also block windmills etc. So in a lot of ways they get to have their cake and eat it.
guappa 2y ago
Swedish government: "We'll only use electric cars!" Also swedish government: "Please don't vacuum or do laundry on cold days when everyone has extra heaters on" Also swedish government: "Everyone's income is public record!" Also swedish government: "We'll give money to people with large homes. The larger the home the more money they will get, because they have more costs for heating." Also swedish government: "This money is not income and not public record." Sweden is a very corrupt capitalist country that is still riding the socialist image they created long ago. But that sweden died with olaf palme. Sweden today is a completely different thing. Remember that the "corruption index" things are about perception, so if you have a good marketing department (and a police that never arrests anyone for corruption) your citizens will generally not know corruption exists. I live in sweden. I've seen how police investigates corruption: "pin everything on the immigrant cleaner and pretend the managers who signed the budget didn't know anything about it" is the strategy. Also the widespread racism that makes most people believe swedish people are inherently honest and immigrants are genetically dishonest helps to sell the story :) Before you downvote me, go live 10 years in sweden, learn the language and meet people who are born there.
- AndyMcConachie 2y ago
  Sounds like The Netherlands. Hypocrisy. White supremacy. Living off of the image of a before time. Corrupt yet not willing to admit it. Blaming everything on immigrants. I live in NL and a lot of what you say about Sweden sounds very similar.
  - pelorat 2y ago
    Almost every violent street crime, street robbery, or armed robbery is perpetrated by people with some form of immigrant background. Both in the NL and in Sweden. (I'm a swede living in the NL). Also western supremacy (the notion that western culture is superior in the world) is not the same as white supremacy.
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      Let me ask you a question: Why do people do desperate things such as robbing other people?
locallost 2y ago
In 2022 Germany's nuclear plants produced 32.8 TWh of electricity, which was 6.4% of the load in that country [1]. Compared to 2022, the spot market prices in Germany are lower in both 2023 (significantly) and 2024. [2] Seems a bit odd that the nuclear exit in Germany did not create large issues, but is wrecking havoc on Sweden. [1] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [2] https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024 https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...
- guerrilla 2y ago
  > Seems a bit odd that the nuclear exit in Germany did not create large issues, but is wrecking havoc on Sweden. It didn't have any effect until the nets and markets were connected. They couldn't outbid us before that.
- svartor 2y ago
  The debate in Sweden is about the extreme spikes in price that you get nowadays and you see those extreme spikes in price in Germany as well if you look day by day instead of month by month. https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024&interval=day https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...
pelorat 2y ago
A big problem with the "green energy transition" is that we're more than happy to build large wind-parks and promote solar (well, not in Sweden so much, it's dark in the winter), but we build little to no storage for it where surplus energy can be stored.
- occz 2y ago
  Storage technology is catching up quickly in terms of economics. It's long been uneconomical to run, but similarly to wind and sola, the prices are plummeting and quickly making the alternatives obsolete. Remember how solar and wind were considered too expensive for a long time, and all of a sudden they were the cheapest thing available with their construction booming? We're on the verge of that happening with storage as well.
dsign 2y ago
In Sweden, I've been in contact with several companies and associations which are raising small solar farms and selling stocks on them (so, there is a primary market for stocks on renewables). Investment is affordable and transparent and it feels "grass-roots democratic". The problem with solar farms is that this time of the year, they don't produce power. The only green alternative that would produce power is nuclear, and that one is out of reach for small private investors.... I don't even know if nuclear power stocks would be available in a secondary market .
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  What about wind power which is strong in winter? What about energy storage systems, e.g. using green gas? There seem to be more green options than nuclear power.
  - pelorat 2y ago
    I think that's a problem everywhere in Europe. We build wind and we build solar, but we don't build storage systems to go with them.
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      A few additions: As long as there is enough production capacity (using fossil fuels), it isn't a serious problem, even though not ideal. Storage systems are economically viable only if there is a high price difference, especially when you have to pay twice the network fee (recently temporarily dropped in Germany). CO2 pricing will increase the price difference with time (renewable energy stays cheap and fossil backups will be more expensive, making room on the market for businesses storing energy)
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    The past few days wind has been pretty bad. In the long term I think it will be good as battery storages are rising, but the next few years are still going to be tough.
occz 2y ago
This is not a politician whose opinion anyone needs to take seriously. She's a constant source of extremely bad takes, the latest of which being dismissing expert criticism of her governments extremely poor plan to subsidize new nuclear construction. Fwiw, nuclear phase-out was a bad call in both Germany and Sweden. New nuclear construction is an equally or worse choice at this moment, with where renewables and storage are today and the trend they are on - prices are already beating nuclear by a large margin and are plummeting, while nuclear keeps getting more expensive each year.

28 points by EvgeniyZh 2y ago

Easy to blame someone else. None of this is new, she's had more than enough time to compensate and Sweden is in the EU energy market by choice.

708145_ 2y ago
It is still true what she says. Having an interconnected electricity system is problematic when countries like Germany misbehave by having a horrible energy politics. That said, it would had been better in Sweden if they hadn't phased out nuclear too! There is a electricity shortage in south of Sweden where industries are denied establishing new initiatives.
- jamesblonde 2y ago
  Sweden has not phased out nuclear. A large portion of electricity generation is still nuclear.
  - 0points 2y ago
    That's revisionistic. Sweden started phasing out nuclear in 1999 and has since closed 6 of 12 reactors. - Barsebäck B1 and B2 was closed in 1999. - Oskarshamn O1 and O2 was closed in 2015 and 2017. - Rinhals R1 and R2 was closed in 2019 and 2020. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraft_i_Sverige#Avveckling_fr%C3%A5n_1999 https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraft_i_Sverige#Avvec...
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      So they haven't actually phased out nuclear power, just reduced it.
      - willvarfar 2y ago
        Or perhaps they haven't been _replacing_ reactors as they reach end of life?
- willvarfar 2y ago
  There isn't an energy shortage in Sweden? Sweden has an overproduction of energy, it is just generally generated in the north (where the hydro is) and consumed in the south (where the people are). The 'shortage in the south' is just a political lens for explaining the high prices from the introduction of energy zones in 2011. Before then, there was one price for electricity in Sweden and this worked to the benefit of the consumer. Stepping back, do we really want the south to invest in _generating_ electricity? And if so, at what granularity? At the kommun level, or the län? At what point is that granularity ok but the whole-of-Sweden granularity that we had before the privatisation push is not ok?
  - mnky9800n 2y ago
    Does Sweden have a single power grid or is it segmented like Norway?
    - piva00 2y ago
      It's a single power grid but the transmission lines north->south are insufficient to carry all the potential electricity generated by hydro at peak production.
  - guappa 2y ago
    > Sweden has an overproduction of energy Yes, that's because all the industry had to move because of the no energy in sweden.
  - lawn 2y ago
    Even though countries may have a net export it doesn't mean they're always exporting.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Actually this is a good thing. There's demand for energy so prices go up. This in turn makes investments in energy generation in Sweden more lucrative since they apparently have a lot of energy revenue coming in from abroad to finance more such projects. There are a lot of renewable energy projects in and around Sweden and the wider region. And of course they are actually manufacturing and exporting a lot of wind turbines as well. Wind technology is a substantial part of their economy. There is no energy shortage in Sweden. They can export as little or as much power as they want. But of course with prices being high that means they export a fair bit and that causes prices to rise. Which is causing Sweden to make a lot of money from this business. If they want lower prices locally, they should look at their local energy market, infrastructure, and regulations instead of blaming the Germans for being able to pay market rates for energy to Sweden.
  - queuep 2y ago
    > There is no energy shortage in Sweden. They can export as little or as much power as they want. This statement definitely needs a source. The EU have laws that require 70% of the produces electricity to be on the market. Source, in Swedish: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/om-elmarknaden/export-och-import-av-el/ https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/om-elmarknaden/export-oc...
    - jillesvangurp 2y ago
      It's a net energy exporter; as many sources will confirm.
      - piva00 2y ago
        It is but that doesn't help us here in Sweden, we pay the highest bid price for the electricity generated here but being exported. The last government at least put in place windfall taxes to pay us back during the massive cost increase in the first winter after Russia invaded Ukraine. We got compensated a few months later the prices went insane. The current government already said they won't do that, which is rather absurd since a lot of our electricity is generated by Vatenfall, a state company.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
And they can opt out by choice. Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  > Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den. Can you explain?
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Europe got dependent on cheap russian gas. And it escaped into a bubble of irresponsible behaviour, where the idea that economic realities on the ground mattered itself got faded out. Scream loud and en mass that the rain should go up on the streets- and politicans would promise you the rain would go up, by installing ventilation, physics would not apply to the citizen. Now the situation is different, and physics applies once more, everybody is screaming, but reality be a harsh mistress- she careth not for the sobbing.
MortyWaves 2y ago
In a similar vein it’s been absolutely nauseating hearing borderline corrupt Conservatives in the UK moaning at every opportunity at the state of the country and its institutions and the idealogical and deliberate decline and underfunding of all of it (including energy). Despite it being entirely their doing from almost 15 years of the Conservative government.
alecco 2y ago
But the Swedish government is taking blame for local shutdowns. The previous day her boss (PM) said so. The 4th paragraph reads: "“I realise that nobody is happy when I say that ‘if we hadn't shut down half of nuclear power, we wouldn't have these problems’. But it's true and it needs to be said.”, Kristersson said, referring to the previous Social Democrat-Greens coalition closing several nuclear reactors between 2019 and 2020 as part of a policy shift towards greater reliance on renewable energy sources." The Swedish Green coalition before them also did shutdowns like the German greens did. And now they have to suffer the consequences. Note that a lot of people are very shortsighted and might think "energy prices were better with the previous greens/labour/etc". They need to be reminded the causes of the crisis.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sigh_again 2y ago
    The Greens had partnered with the SPD from 1998 to 2005 (and then again recently since 2021 but that's no related to the subject). They directly contributed to creating the Energiewende program. Merkel & friends implemented it, but saying the greens just "indicated preference" is utter bullshit. It's also the greens today trying to exclude any nuclear project from benefiting from grants at the European level. The Greens do not get to have their cake and eat it when they are, in fact, directly one of the sources of the current german problem. Those 232g CO2/kWH as I write (and over 700 last week) is exactly what they asked for when they pushed for a full renewable energy grid backed by hopes and dreams.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      > Merkel & friends implemented it Do you mean they are puppets of the Greens and as opposition to red-green government could not reverse policies they have considered harmful? > directly one of the sources of the current german problem From 2005 to 2021 it was Merkel & Co in the government making most of the energy-related decisions, yet you single out Greens as the primary culprits. Why? Did they sign Nord Stream agreements? > It's also the greens today trying to exclude any nuclear project from benefiting from grants at the European level. How not starting any nuclear project now is relevant to the current situation? It’s a strange claim given the time and costs needed to build a single nuclear power plant. It’s would not solve anything in the next 10 years at least, will be the most expensive energy on the market and add a dependency on a external supplier outside of EU (you cannot seriously suggest that we should get our uranium from Africa or Kazakhstan, so it‘s going to be an American one, same terms as LNG?)
lawn 2y ago
Enough time? A nuclear reactor takes much longer than she's been at the office to build, and the Germans would still siphon off most of that electricity driving the price high nevertheless. Wind obviously wouldn't solve it (since, you know, the energy prices were so high because the wind didn't blow). The other actual solution would be something drastic like break away from EU energy market, is that what you're suggesting?
- wkat4242 2y ago
  The more obvious answer would have been to invest in national infrastructure to connect the hydro in the north to the consumers in the south rather than nuclear. Either way, she's responsible. The Germans are not. Their actions are an external factor she should have compensated for.
  - lawn 2y ago
    As others have commented on, it's not enough to just lay new cables and the lack of nuclear energy (or hydro or coal...) in the south is why the energy from the north can't reach the south.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      A link would be helpful
  - Gud 2y ago
    Ebba Bush Thor has been a proponent of nuclear power investments for a long time. She has only recently come into a position where she can improve the situation. She is not at fault for Swedens disastrous energy politics.
Xelbair 2y ago
yeah, extremely so. Especially if the country shut downs their nuclear power plants in middle of energy crisis, while there are laws in place that mandate energy exchange between different EU and EU adjacent countries(Norway). Did they have time to handle it? No, adjusting your grid to be resilient to such bad actors takes more time.
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  Who shut down nuclear within of an energy crisis?
  - Xelbair 2y ago
    Germany? When war in Ukraine started and sourcing cheap gas has become a problem - energy is is more than just electricity, although some of gas was also used for that. Please, don't tie your economy to cheap gas from one source and try to bring everyone down with you when the access to it is constrained.
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      No, Germany didn't. They waited until the crisis was over.

Ekaros 2y ago

How hard it is to build North South transfer capacity? I mean intra-Sweden capacity. My understanding is that Finland can buy power from the north and then move it to south effectively... And we don't even produce that power...

jillesvangurp 2y ago
Probably requires many billions of investment that somebody has to budget for and pay for.
hurril 2y ago
The problem is that transferring energy like that requires both lines and the ability to receive the energy. Transferring has (large) energy losses, the ability to receive requires a large inertial mass, like the large and heavy turbines of the nuclear power plants. There are/ were plans for a number of different power links, but some of them have been denied because of environmental concerns (I think! please correct me on that.)
- lawn 2y ago
  This is the answer. It's not as simple as just laying down more cable, and it was a really hard self-own to shut down the nuclear plants in the south without anything to cover for them.
jsnell 2y ago
Would building that North-South transfer capacity even help? It seems like the basic mental model here is that it would equalize prices between Northern Sweden and Germany, not between Northern and Southern Sweden. And Germany is quite a bit bigger than Northern Sweden. So what should then happen during these German shortfalls is to move the German prices (and Southern Swedish prices) down by an imperceptible amount, while the Northern Swedish prices go up by a ton.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  As long as north-south capacity is reasonable compared to south-Germany. So it would increase prices somewhat in north, but as long as not all new capacity can be moved to Germany it wouldn't fully match prices.

knorker 2y ago

Would have been a great opportunity to make money then by exporting their own nuclear power... if they hadn't shut a bunch of it down. Then they could have chosen to refund their own consumers, if that's what they wanted.

alecco 2y ago
The green coalition governments across the EU are leaving a huge mess behind. De-industrialization at a pace never seen before at peace times. China is happy to fill in the void.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  How is China filling a void in local energy production? Exporting energy over those distances isn't viable. I mean granted, China's push to expand their solar panel production has led to affordable solar panels for a lot of home owners and communities, massively boosting solar / renewable energy adoption to the point that local energy grids are at capacity. Likewise, their push to expand production of batteries and cars has led to an influx of more affordable cars into Europe. But isn't that the wish / goal? More renewable energy, less dependence on petrol and gas and the like? It's just that both the US and Europe didn't invest and scale up as much and as fast as China was able to.
  - alecco 2y ago
    > How is China filling a void in local energy production? China is investing in power generation almost as much as the rest of the world combined. That energy is used by their massive and growing manufacturing industry. Bye bye EU manufacturing like cars. Note China wasn't even a significant exporter of cars just 10 years ago and now they are becoming dominant. Germany and the EU dug their grave. It would be hard to undo the damage now.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    You can export electricity in the form of product that needed electricity to make, like a bike.

Havoc 2y ago

Think must people agree it was a mistake but blaming infra country difference on another country seems a bit much

mikl 2y ago
You can say that, but on the power flow maps, it was quite clear. At the same time we were paying ~$1.5 USD for 1 kWh, we were exporting power to Germany (and other energy-unstable countries like Italy). Sure, better energy links inside Sweden could have helped, but part of the reason the price was being bid up so high was the exports to Germany.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  It is debatable whether higher-capacity interconnects within Sweden can solve this since Germany and neighbouring countries need so much power that any feasible interconnect will be maxed out. A better solution to the problem is to change the electricity regions so that the areas around international interconnects where demand outstrips the supply get their own zones. This way the price on 'the continent' can be decoupled more from the price within Sweden and the extreme price swings and price discrepancies between the north and the rest of the country will be dampened. Swedish customers living within the new regions can get government support to reduce the impact of export pricing without those supports being needed for the current large zones (III and IV being mostly affected).

willvarfar 2y ago

This blame game is all about supporting current political narratives about nuclear power etc. It's not really about the energy crisis. Sweden's energy mess is all about 'free markets'. Back in the old days the state-run energy companies in Sweden produced an overabundance of electricity, mostly from hydro, making Sweden one of the cheapest electricity countries in the world. It was really common to replace wood burners with direct electric radiators in old houses across Sweden. Then the British conservative party (equiv to the current Swedish administration who the article is about), heavily into privatisation, started selling the public utilities. One thing they did was split network ownership from supplier, so you have one company owning trains and another owning track, and the same for electric net vs generation etc. This created a kind of artificial market, because you can't actually choose with your feet what company has power lines to your house etc. So they invented energy markets and mock auctions and things. Of course in hindsight all those privatisation thingies are no longer popular. But at the time the rest of Europe thought 'oh that's a good idea!' Within Sweden the electricity is generally generated in the north and consumed in the south and the socialist governments with their nationalised utilitieshad a fixed cost in the whole country. Interestingly it was the Danes who complained because they border the south of Sweden and can't generate electricity nearly so cheaply so the cheap cost of Swedish electricity was 'unfair competition'. In 2011 the Swedes had to scrap their fixed one-price policy and introduce 'energy zones' that get increasingly more expensive as you approach Denmark. Fast forward to today and we have Sweden producing more energy than it consumes, but the utility companies get more money from selling that abroad than at home, meaning the Swedes have to buy their electricity from abroad! We basically logically from a market perspective have electricty flowing out of Sweden to be sold by the utility companies and then back into Sweden to be consumed by households. And we wonder why there is another winter fuel price shock warning in the offing!

hurril 2y ago
Which privatisations are the cause of this energy conundrum?
- willvarfar 2y ago
  Perhaps we can spin the question around: Can anyone name a public utility that was privatised in western Europe and for which a clear case can be made that it was a good thing to do (from the perspective of the country and the public)?

wewxjfq 2y ago

Title is misleading. She criticizes Swedish energy policy. Her gripe with Germany is that they only have one price zone.

locallost 2y ago
So it's clickbait about a polarizing issue of nuclear. In that case this is actually a fair criticism. There is a lot of talk within Germany that this should change, and there should be multiple zones. A lot here means "people in the energy business have talked about it for some time". I believe the northern states have already requested it, but states like Bayern are very much against. The main issue is that on occasion the markets get out of whack, the price is cheap because a lot of renewable energy is produced in the north, but there isn't enough capacity to transport it to the south. There they then have to fire up e.g. coal plants but this gets paid with other mechanisms and doesn't affect the price. At the same time they refuse to invest in grid upgrades, so they have low transmission costs as well, and also block windmills etc. So in a lot of ways they get to have their cake and eat it.

guappa 2y ago

Swedish government: "We'll only use electric cars!" Also swedish government: "Please don't vacuum or do laundry on cold days when everyone has extra heaters on" Also swedish government: "Everyone's income is public record!" Also swedish government: "We'll give money to people with large homes. The larger the home the more money they will get, because they have more costs for heating." Also swedish government: "This money is not income and not public record." Sweden is a very corrupt capitalist country that is still riding the socialist image they created long ago. But that sweden died with olaf palme. Sweden today is a completely different thing. Remember that the "corruption index" things are about perception, so if you have a good marketing department (and a police that never arrests anyone for corruption) your citizens will generally not know corruption exists. I live in sweden. I've seen how police investigates corruption: "pin everything on the immigrant cleaner and pretend the managers who signed the budget didn't know anything about it" is the strategy. Also the widespread racism that makes most people believe swedish people are inherently honest and immigrants are genetically dishonest helps to sell the story :) Before you downvote me, go live 10 years in sweden, learn the language and meet people who are born there.

AndyMcConachie 2y ago
Sounds like The Netherlands. Hypocrisy. White supremacy. Living off of the image of a before time. Corrupt yet not willing to admit it. Blaming everything on immigrants. I live in NL and a lot of what you say about Sweden sounds very similar.
- pelorat 2y ago
  Almost every violent street crime, street robbery, or armed robbery is perpetrated by people with some form of immigrant background. Both in the NL and in Sweden. (I'm a swede living in the NL). Also western supremacy (the notion that western culture is superior in the world) is not the same as white supremacy.
  - tcfhgj 2y ago
    Let me ask you a question: Why do people do desperate things such as robbing other people?

locallost 2y ago

In 2022 Germany's nuclear plants produced 32.8 TWh of electricity, which was 6.4% of the load in that country [1]. Compared to 2022, the spot market prices in Germany are lower in both 2023 (significantly) and 2024. [2] Seems a bit odd that the nuclear exit in Germany did not create large issues, but is wrecking havoc on Sweden. [1] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [2] https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024 https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...

guerrilla 2y ago
> Seems a bit odd that the nuclear exit in Germany did not create large issues, but is wrecking havoc on Sweden. It didn't have any effect until the nets and markets were connected. They couldn't outbid us before that.
svartor 2y ago
The debate in Sweden is about the extreme spikes in price that you get nowadays and you see those extreme spikes in price in Germany as well if you look day by day instead of month by month. https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024&interval=day https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...

pelorat 2y ago

A big problem with the "green energy transition" is that we're more than happy to build large wind-parks and promote solar (well, not in Sweden so much, it's dark in the winter), but we build little to no storage for it where surplus energy can be stored.

occz 2y ago
Storage technology is catching up quickly in terms of economics. It's long been uneconomical to run, but similarly to wind and sola, the prices are plummeting and quickly making the alternatives obsolete. Remember how solar and wind were considered too expensive for a long time, and all of a sudden they were the cheapest thing available with their construction booming? We're on the verge of that happening with storage as well.

dsign 2y ago

In Sweden, I've been in contact with several companies and associations which are raising small solar farms and selling stocks on them (so, there is a primary market for stocks on renewables). Investment is affordable and transparent and it feels "grass-roots democratic". The problem with solar farms is that this time of the year, they don't produce power. The only green alternative that would produce power is nuclear, and that one is out of reach for small private investors.... I don't even know if nuclear power stocks would be available in a secondary market .

tcfhgj 2y ago
What about wind power which is strong in winter? What about energy storage systems, e.g. using green gas? There seem to be more green options than nuclear power.
- pelorat 2y ago
  I think that's a problem everywhere in Europe. We build wind and we build solar, but we don't build storage systems to go with them.
  - tcfhgj 2y ago
    A few additions: As long as there is enough production capacity (using fossil fuels), it isn't a serious problem, even though not ideal. Storage systems are economically viable only if there is a high price difference, especially when you have to pay twice the network fee (recently temporarily dropped in Germany). CO2 pricing will increase the price difference with time (renewable energy stays cheap and fossil backups will be more expensive, making room on the market for businesses storing energy)
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  The past few days wind has been pretty bad. In the long term I think it will be good as battery storages are rising, but the next few years are still going to be tough.

occz 2y ago

This is not a politician whose opinion anyone needs to take seriously. She's a constant source of extremely bad takes, the latest of which being dismissing expert criticism of her governments extremely poor plan to subsidize new nuclear construction. Fwiw, nuclear phase-out was a bad call in both Germany and Sweden. New nuclear construction is an equally or worse choice at this moment, with where renewables and storage are today and the trend they are on - prices are already beating nuclear by a large margin and are plummeting, while nuclear keeps getting more expensive each year.