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

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!

Sweden has not phased out nuclear. A large portion of electricity generation is still nuclear.

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#Avvec...

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?

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.