Sweden tells Germany: Reform your electricity market for power cable approval

These were the shenanigans of some German fossil power plant companies producing intentionally a bit less to drive the price. The German people are a bit disgruntled about it, but not very mad, as those plants days are numbered.

This is also the government that cancelled 17 planned wind parks for no reason and then has the audacity to lecture other countries about energy security. I am pro nuclear power but Ebba Bush is so psychotically pro nuclear that it borders on kink territory.

Many arguments call countries' names, but actually prices are dictated by companies (directly or indirectly by their behavior) that want to make a profit. Sweden's electricity prices, as a rule of thumb, are always lower than prices in Germany, so from an economic p.o.v. it makes sense to buy as much electricity in Sweden as can be transported south. Of course, that drives prices up in Sweden to historic level (but still cheaper than in Germany). Why are prices so high in Germany? Several reasons have been discussed here, but one I would like to highlight is that operators of gas and coal power plants, which are meant as reserves in cases of high demand and low supply, do not produce sufficiently much electricity: they simply earn more by selling little electricity at high prices than by selling more electricity at lower prices. The politicians' fault is that they have created a mostly unregulated market where under the right conditions some actors can make huge profits at the cost of everyone else. This is why more nuclear power plants won't help: even their operators will have to pay back the huge debts left from construction and thus also will try to maximize profits from high prices via low supply.

So Busch is generally a pretty shit politician and wrong on most things that she says, but in the case of Germany needing to reform it's electricity market, she's not wrong.

She's also not wrong that shutting down the nuclear capacity in Germany was a generally bad choice, but her opinion that we should go back to nuclear is hilariously bad.

Finally, there's a clear need for a change in rules when it comes to electricity pricing in Sweden - the fact that we're having to pay the rates that Germany offers for what electricity they import while most electricity in Sweden is still produced very cheaply is clearly an exploitative system.

(Tl;dr at the bottom)

Is this AI generated slob? Because it reads like AI generated slob. And the 'picture' of that lady looks like it's AI generated as well.

Needless to say, what this lady is saying in regards to Germany has no basis in reality. She claims Germany's unstable energy prices are a result of Germany shutting down it's nuclear reactor. This is an oversimplification of the highest order.

For reference, the newest nuclear powerplant that went online in Germany, did so in 1989. The most recent plan to build even newer reactors was cancelled in 1999. 2002 a law was passed that prohibited the building of new nuclear reactors and limited the operational life of all nuclear reactors to at most 32 years. That would have meant that all reactors had to be shut down after 2021.
However in 2010, the operational life of a few select reactors was lengthened by 12 years.
2011 then, after Fukushima, the operational life was reduced to just two additional years; the last reactor was set to get shut down in April 2023. This all was decided by the conservative government led by the CDU.

In 2022, the Green minister for energy and the economy, Robert Habeck, passed an emergency resolution, allowing the at that time 3 remaining nuclear reactors, which in total provided at most 6% of Germany's energy needs, to run for half a year longer.

So let's tally up: The last nuclear reactor was built 1989. Since 2002, by law, no new nuclear reactors were allowed to be built. In 2022, the operational life of the last 3 reactors was extended by the Green minister for energy and the economy. Those 3 reactors provided at most 6% of the German energy mix.

What happened to the rest of the nuclear output that had to be replaced? The conservative, CDU-led government, in their infinite wisdom, killed the incentives to build up renewable energy, which Germany was a world leader in at the time (keyword: "Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz", "Solardeckel" if you're interested to read about that whole saga). They then allowed Putin to basically capture the German energy market with cheap russian gas. We all know how that worked out.

Compounding is the issue that southern, conservative-led states in Germany (mainly Bavaria) are blocking both the expansion of renewable energy (keyword: "Windrad Abstandsregel"), as well as the expansion of the energy grid, so cheap energy created in the north through renewable sources can't be transported to the south.

But surely we could just build new nuclear reactors, right? The conservative state-government in Bavaria certainly thinks so (after being in favor of the nuclear shutdown even as late as 2020). The simple answer is: No. Renewable energy is simply too cheap. Nuclear energy was always subsidized in Germany, both during construction and during operation. And the task of finding a suitable location for storing the nuclear waste also falls to the government. So unless you are ideologically captured, financing new reactors as the government doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense for the energy companies either, because nuclear power is way too long of a commitment for them, compared to simply throwing up more wind turbines or solar panels. "German efficiency" would complicate the matter of building new nuclear reactors further. Nuclear reactors going online in Europe in the past years did so with hefty delays, cost overruns and construction times ranging between 12 and 20 years. And if the BER airport is used as a comparison, it would be even worse in Germany.

Bonus: A timeline (in german) highlighting steps towards the shutdown of nuclear power in Germany: https://www.base.bund.de/de/nukleare-sicherheit/atomausstieg/ausstieg-atomkraft/ausstieg-atomkraft_inhalt.html#a449768

Tl;dr: So no, dear AI generated swedish person, nuclear energy is no viable path for Germany, and also no, neither the shutdown, nor the ban on new nuclear reactors is the fault of Robert Habeck.

Personal opinion: Robert Habeck is the closest we get in Germany to a politician that is both 'electable' in the eyes of the broad public and genuinely for the people. Smears like that AI lady's have been all too common in an effort to discredit him, most of those have been lies or deliberate misconstructions. So a heartfelt "fuck you!" goes out from me to her.

However, regional price disparities persist due to weak transmission links between Sweden’s north – home to its vast hydropower resources – and the more industrialised south.

Blaming Germany for their own inaptitude, as you would expect from far right Morons

(To be fair we have the Same Problem in Germany with NIMBYs and Powerlines)

What if Sweden built transmission between its north and south? Then it wouldn't have to point fingers against a party the Swedish ruling party doesn't like.

Edit: Yeah, there might be truth to the pricing scheme, but pointing at nuclear power phaseout is not ok.

Sweden needs a better domestic pricing model for sure. One that doesn't punish households (who has historically voted for responsible energy policies and therfore created a great surplus) so that energy producers can have super high margins.

Also, Germany really needs to get their shit together when it comes to fossil free energy. Not just rely on countries like France and Sweden to solve energy for them. However, German industry will probably be nuked as tariffs enter the world scene, so maybe the demand will go down.

Why should electricity be treated like a special good in the EU? A major point to the EU is to facilitate trade across national borders. Why is electricity so special?