Good to Vattenfall sells brown coal – Swedish Dagbladet

Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe coal power plants. Photo: Lars Pehrson

V to start from scratch. During Göran Persson as prime minister would Waterfall expand abroad. Investing in German lignite was seen clearly as a good investment. Today coal power drawn by profitability problems and Vattenfall, which will be climate neutral by 2050, would rather get rid of the business.

In the election campaign demanded that Gustav Fridolin German coal remains in the ground. The mining and firing of lignite would cease, but not sold to someone else who could continue to contribute to carbon dioxide emissions, was the message from the mouthpiece.

Then there was the mouthpiece minister. A year later, there was an ad in the Financial Times: Brown coal is sold to the highest bidder. The Green Party had to give in, perhaps, the decision was to protect Ojnareskogen from a limestone quarry oh so small consolation.

Now it seems that sales may be off. Vattenfall has found a buyer in the Czech energy company EPH and investment company PPF. It is good. State-owned Vattenfall should never have invested in the German lignite to begin with, but it does not help to cry over spilled milk. Vattenfall Chairman Lars G Nordström notes that the sale involves a smaller loss than if the company maintains operations (SvD 19/4).

The adventure of German lignite is the other really bad deal for Vattenfall. The first was Nuonaffären that occurred during the alliance government. This is not as catastrophic, but bad enough.

How long brown coal will be burned in Germany remains to be seen. Dirty smoke from coal power plants are nothing like the Germans, but the decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 makes it difficult both to eat the cake and keep it. Somewhere will come from electric and until renewable energy supply is more extensive, Germany will continue to be dependent on coal – but also gas from Russia. A third of the German gas imports come from Russia, making the country the Gazprom’s biggest customer.

The now criticize Vattenfall sells coal reserves mean that it is a hypocrisy: Waterfalls reduce its fossil footprint but let someone else bear the emissions instead. But if Sweden would be some kind of international environment policeman buying up coal mines, dismisses those who work there and then put under lock and key for the mine mouth, it would not just be insanely expensive – it would also seriously impair our relations with other countries.

the best thing we can do to reduce emissions in Germany are not themselves make us dependent on the German coal power forward. With a Swedish nuclear power is on its knees, partly because of the red-green government’s shock rise in output tax and combined with the new security requirements that come into force in 2020, we have received an imminent risk that the Swedish nuclear power plants will soon shut down due to unprofitability.

Unless we stop penalty taxing nuclear energy, or start building wind turbines at a furious pace, we will soon also be dependent on the German coal power.