By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
From the Telegraph:
Britain has become increasingly reliant on electricity imports to keep the lights on, particularly in winter. But Norway, one of our most important suppliers, is having second thoughts.
Norway’s electricity system is dominated by hydroelectricity. Unfortunately, the water is running low, particularly in the south of the country, which is connected with Britain and other European markets. Reservoir levels there have been below the previous 20-year minimum for several weeks, and fell again this week, despite August normally being part of the filling season.
If it doesn’t rain soon, the opportunity for filling will be over until spring; from October, increasing amounts of precipitation fall as snow and don’t contribute to reservoir levels until they melt. Many people assume Norway can use imported electricity to refill its reservoirs by pumping water, but very few of the reservoirs have pumps. Once the water has gone, that’s it until it rains or the snow melts.
The Norwegian debate about electricity exports has become increasingly hostile. Norway has twice amended its Energy Act to give authorities greater powers to cut exports if domestic security of supply is threatened. The threshold is now a risk of shortages, rather than waiting until an actual shortage occurs.
The Left-wing Red Party has repeatedly demanded stronger action, proposing in March that transmission operator Statnett should reduce export capacity whenever important reservoirs fall below their seasonal median, and renewing its demands this month as water levels continued to fall.
Pressure is not confined to the Left. Centre Party politicians have also called for restrictions, while Kristoffer Sivertsen, energy spokesman for the Right-wing Progress Party, has argued that exports are draining reservoirs and leaving Norway dependent on the “weather gods”.
His party wants to enforce minimum reservoir levels and believes connections with Britain and Germany should facilitate a genuine bilateral power exchange rather than simply exporting Norwegian electricity to higher-priced markets.
Underlying this is widespread resentment over electricity prices. Southern Norwegian prices rose sharply after the cables with Britain and Germany opened in 2021. Many Norwegians believe they imported continental price volatility into what had previously been a comparatively insulated hydro system.
The political reaction has been strong and broadly united. Almost every party in the Norwegian parliament now opposes new interconnectors. The governing Labour Party has promised not to approve any and instructed Statnett not to begin planning further subsea links before 2029.
It also opposes replacing the ageing Skagerrak 1 and 2 cables to Denmark, commissioned in 1976 and 1977, and reaching the end of their technical lives in 2026 and 2027. When one failed this summer, a Centre Party politician described spending public money repairing it as “madness” and said Norway should start getting used to limiting exports.
Terje Aasland, the energy minister, went significantly further this week. In an interview with Reuters, he declared that Norway acting as Europe’s “green battery” is a “flawed idea” that had become outdated. European countries, he argued, should become more self-reliant, strengthening their own firm generation rather than expecting Norway to compensate for coal and nuclear closures and insufficient investment in gas generation.
Full story here.
Norway gets 89% of its power from hydro, with most of the rest from wind.
As a consequence, their citizens have grown used to cheap electricity. With interconnectors, however, the power flows to where the price is highest. While we, along with Denmark and Germany, can tap in when we are short, this has a price consequence for the Norwegians.
This, as Kathryn points out, is especially problematic for the southern region.
