Expert: “Government should protect Swedish electricity consumers”

The Swedish electricity system is once again in the spotlight after massive price variations in the country’s four electricity price areas and depending on the day. Now, electricity market expert Bengt Ekenstierna criticizes the government for not protecting consumers.

Earlier, Samnytt wrote that the government should take strong action to protect Swedish electricity consumers from the significantly negative effects of both the Social Democratic governments on Sweden’s electricity system and the EU. Ekenstierna now agrees with this criticism in an op-ed in Epoch Times.

He argues that it is unreasonable for Swedish electricity consumers to suffer from high prices due to Germany’s poor handling of its energy policy for decades, where they have phased out nuclear power and instead relied on Russian natural gas and wind power. He further argues that those who claim that we should have a single electricity market throughout the EU do not seem to care that the electricity market is not even the same within Sweden, where enormous price variations are observed.

“If we cannot succeed in having an integrated Swedish electricity market, why should we expose ourselves to an unreasonable ambition to have a common European electricity market?”, he writes.

Government responsibility

Instead, he says that the government should take strong action and recommends two measures:

First, he wants the government to abolish the electricity areas and introduce the counter purchase model, which we had before 2012. This is to be able to handle Sweden’s situation where our electricity grid cannot supply southern Sweden with enough electricity.

He also wants to adjust the pricing so that the export volumes do not dictate the price of electricity within Sweden. He believes that these modifications do not affect the export volumes or electricity prices in the countries we export to, and do not violate EU rules on discrimination.

In this way, what is considered “overcharging” can be stopped in a “dysfunctional electricity market” that only benefits the state treasury through bottleneck fees and VAT, as well as electricity producers making excessive profits at the expense of the Swedish people.

The BEKEN model

Ekenstierna, together with about ten other experts, has developed the so-called BEKEN model, a pricing model that could lower Swedish electricity prices.

Electricity prices in southern Sweden are soaring due to electricity being exported abroad. Swedish electricity is not enough for both Swedish and European consumers, which means that countries like Lithuania have to help. This drives up prices because electricity prices vary significantly between Sweden and Europe, and the highest bid determines the price for the next day’s electricity.

It is the (by the Social Democrats) dismantled electricity production in southern Sweden that has caused this, along with a gas crisis in Europe and a pricing model in the European system that has failed, according to Ekenstierna.

The BEKEN model entails that the electricity used in Sweden should cost what it costs to produce, while export electricity receives a separate pricing.