What happens when electricity is not available, available or can be used? The water in the tap, the heat from the air heat pump and lighting basically stop immediately. Wastewater remains stagnant or is discharged unfiltered. District heating, accumulator tanks, freezers and refrigerators maintain the temperature for half a day to a day. Electric vehicles cannot drive longer distances than 60 kilometers. Industries basically have to end their production immediately.
The "two holes in the wall" advertisement from the early 1990s was a way of demonstrating that the security of supply was almost 100%. The advertisement was communicated before deregulation and can also be said to symbolize the crowning achievement of the doctrine of the Swedish electricity system as a supporting pillar in the expansion of welfare. This meant that main and regional networks as well as production capacity in the form of hydropower in the north and nuclear power in the south, which was gradually expanded from the 1930s-1940s.
The market was not free and people in affected areas were restricted in their lives. Civil servants handled issues of permits and control mechanisms and domestic industry developed solutions that were implemented. Development areas in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) were put into practice as a way to transport electricity over long distances. Investments such as the Swedish nuclear weapons program provided important lessons even in peaceful contexts. During the Second World War, the pace of expansion decreased. The most extensive part took place during the Cold War and with its own resources. This was primarily as a consequence of Sweden having been cut off during the war and forced to develop industrial capacity at the same time as the rest of Europe's infrastructure needed to be built from scratch. After the Second World War, an energy system was built that was redundant and fit well into the total defense concept of the time.
The management of the system expansion was primarily the responsibility of the Royal Swedish Water Management Authority. The system was built through a high degree of interaction between national actors, with the result that it became robust and integrated. In order to maintain the balance between upstream (production) and downstream (consumption) and the long transport distances across the surface of Sweden, the system needed to be strong, controllable, controlled and planned. The main grid is the artery that runs largely along the length of Sweden. To supply the grid from the north, production could be planned through dams and by utilizing the long river channels that enabled the water to be cascaded. In the south, only the Göta River made something similar possible. Since neither the climate nor the topography allows for sufficient hydropower in the south, nuclear power was needed to deliver electricity to the area with the greatest consumption and population. This was the strategy for fully electrifying Sweden and the most stable, environmentally and cost-effective solution for ensuring security of supply that could contribute to the expansion of welfare, in addition to providing reasonable electricity prices. The doctrine, the teaching for building the electricity system, was based on natural science and the strategy was based on logic. The political struggle between the wills of how it should be done was kept out.
Since technology still provides the conditions that prevail, the system needs to be in balance. Renewable production sources such as wind and solar energy have been expanded and connections to the continent and surrounding countries have been realized after the deregulation of the market. This is at the same time as the bulk of the nuclear power fleet of a total of 12 reactors in the south has been phased out.
This has had several effects. Among other things, dependence on external power has increased when domestic production is too small. Above all, the continent has a lot of wind power, which in combination with the small effect that we can control, means that pricing is based on this. This results in prices that vary greatly. Sweden is also the only country in the Nordpool market that has divided the country into electricity areas, where areas with their own plannable production statistically have lower prices. Areas without their own production have higher external dependencies and are priced accordingly. As previously mentioned, this production is largely wind power that can only contribute to the system when there is kinetic energy in the form of wind.
The phasing out of production that provides continuous kinetic energy, flywheel mass in the system with 4 MWe of installed plannable and immediately responsive power in southern Sweden and the phasing in of unplannable production without storage systems for electrical power radically depletes the robustness of the system because it occurs without continuity. The phasing out of nuclear power thus corresponds not only to just under 500% of Sweden's needs of 25 TWh of electrical energy per year but also the ability to deliver in all situations. Nowadays, this has gone so far that even in everyday life it can mean that deliveries are not made in parts of southern Sweden.
In other words, the logic of an open market and the Swedish electricity system that has been changed to be unbalanced is lame. The political effect of advocating for production sources that cannot be planned and of disregarding the original design and hoping for a free market for something that supports society is to sell out our independence driven by idealism and overconfidence in the market. The lack of leadership to maintain the system balance means that we risk losing our delivery capacity. Two holes in the wall still work, but the greater the optimization, the greater the complexity and greater the risk of interruptions. In challenging situations, simplicity is usually the only viable option; systems that are exposed to other dominant systems accelerate the problem. Seen from the perspective that the security situation has deteriorated significantly, Sweden needs to quickly regain control of its energy resources.
Politics basically consists of ideologies where ideas and visions are guiding principles and the parties that convince the most govern the country for four years. Short-term political governance, an environment where responsive action is allowed to govern together with an inability to handle dilemmas has in more cases than the electricity system proven to put Sweden in a bad position. The Swedish electricity system is no exception.
The Russian warfare in Ukraine includes combating the energy system across the country as a way to break the will to resist, early on with a focus on the distribution network and gradually then on power plants. The fact that Ukraine has managed to maintain resilience in civil society is largely due to the fact that the electricity system is designed with robustness in mind, where electricity production is distributed across the country and without absolute political demands for fossil-freedom and with distribution networks that can be repaired quickly.
We therefore propose:
- Prioritize delivery capacity above economic and climate optimizations driven by political impatience for as long as the security situation requires. In terms of the security situation, slaughter the sacred cow of going completely fossil-free immediately. Maintain and restore the fossil production capacity that exists in the system as emergency capacity, including fossil, and create the conditions to be able to repair the electricity grids all over Sweden.
- Establish an electricity preparation similar to the defense preparation and build based on the natural laws of the electricity system jointly across party boundaries. Based on the results, decisions are made that direct the electricity system to a system that is so robust that it is designed in a similar way to before. The goal could be that the system is almost 100% reliable from today and continuously 60 years into the future, the same time it took to build the systems we have largely dismantled.
- Reform and consolidate the current government administrations in the energy sector, as electricity is one of several energy systems. Target the electricity grid and production actors that connect directly to the national grid by requiring stability and robustness.
- Decisions need to be made quickly, based on facts instead of the fear of clashing with politics. Form a state agency that initiates the realization of the reconstruction of the Swedish electricity system and guides the development to meet the need for stability, preparedness and then a gradual return to 100% fossil-free. This agency should be a single-minded authority that controls and leads the work.
Total defense is based on the fact that there is integrity to defend. The electricity system is part of civil defense. An optimized and market-controlled electricity system does not give us the freedom to decide on our priorities, that is, to control resources so that they serve us. The electricity system is one of the most important societal support structures for maintaining the will to defend and thus survive. The Ukraine war clearly shows that the will to defend is directly related to maintaining societal functions.
Energy policy is security policy. A country always has an energy policy, its own or someone else's.