Live data from Hacker News

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

euractiv.com

21–30 of 129 posts

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

#21
post #17
post #2

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.

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 sugge…

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.

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

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So they haven't actually phased out nuclear power, just reduced it.

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

#23
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 tur…

> 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-oc...

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

#24
post #2

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.

And they can opt out by choice. Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den.

> Bitter infighting ensues in the russian gas addict frack den.

Can you explain?

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

#25
post #3

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...

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.

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

#26
post #9
post #2

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.

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 20…

[flagged]

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

#27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Does Sweden have a single power grid or is it segmented like Norway?

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

#29

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 burne…

Sounds exactly like Norway. In a sense I don't mind us making billions of selling our electricity to the rest of Europe. Problem is how it's increased prices domestically as well. So government makes billions, people suffer. Most people thus wants to "cut the cables" overseas, but I think a better arrangement would be to share the profits. Which we currently mostly do for homes, by having a subsidized max price, but energy-consuming industry is struggling.

> This blame game is all about supporting current political narratives about nuclear power etc. It's not really about the energy crisis.

In Norway there's a push for nuclear, but I also feel some of it is not honestly about solving anything related to energy. A vocal (minority I hope?) is mostly muddling the water as they're against anything green, so they know this will just stall other things for decades while things are being planned. Or they're against windmills and thus try to push this instead. It's a weird debate, where I certainly can see why nuclear is beneficial or why some people are against, but many of the arguments aren't in good faith.

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

#30
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 tur…

Long-term, macro whatever it may be a good thing I suppose, but short term, the average are suffering under multiplied energy costs. Monthly bills are still double that of what they used to be and any government compensation measures have long ended.

End users should not suffer under government / market fuckery.

Post reply on HN