The sad part is that the backbone of our clean energy system in Sweden, nuclear power, is being dismantled by persistent attacks from the environmental party. Since 2000 they’ve dismantled half of our nuclear fleet, and are commited to destroying the rest within twenty years.
Meanwhile our national grid operator is warning about the potential need for rolling blackouts during the winter demand peaks, which coincide the very coldest days of the year (which are also dark and windless). This winter there were below -40°C in parts of the country, and when the overwhelming majority of households rely on the grid for heating, extended outages have the potential to be lethal. Meanwhile, the electricity cost for a normal single family home can exceed 1’500€ equivalent for a single winter month, which can be compared to the median wage after taxes (3’000€ equivalent).
That’s not to mention that many new companies are being refused electricity connections by the grid providers due to them being unable to guarantee electricity supply the whole year (despite massive surpluses & negative prices during summer & windy seasons).
Meanwhile wood fire heating is making a huge comeback, reaching levels not seen since the 80s. 2022 marked the first year in my lifetime when many built up areas smell like wood fire in the winter, and have done so every year since. Industry experts are talking about adding fossil gas turbines as a stop gap measure to shore up the system, until we can either expand hydro by damming up the last northern rivers (currently prohibited due to environmental regulations to protect fish) or increase nuclear capacity again.
“Without the option of “clean” natural gas, Sweden turned to district heating – an idea which had originated in New York in the 19th century. But Sweden committed to it in a big way during the 1960s and ‘70s, deciding it was the best way to meet the heating needs of the 1 million homes now being built. This decision shaped the way homes in Sweden are heated: today, some 90% of its multi-family apartment blocks are connected to district heating systems – with heat distributed from power plants (usually on the edge of cities) as hot water via a network of pipes.”
District heating systems have fascinated me since I learned about them and I wish I could find more information on things like the financial costs and work involved in converting existing neighborhoods to block heating, etc. I don’t like having single points of failure, but the idea of having some kind of central heating station for every square mile or something seems like a happy medium and I’m curious how the numbers actually play out.
Concise writing as always from those guys.
But it’s interesting to see, the UK has had the crutch of cheap energy kicked out from under them, and they’re not adapting well to the change.
With an increase in gas prices, the network will enter a death spiral, where the cost of maintaining the network is borne by fewer and fewer people, until the cost per person to be connected is simply too high, and everything falls apart.
Lmao, get frozen limeys
Classic textbook. Sceptic.
