Debate, Energy | While a super-capitalist has set the light, Ap’s management stumbles around in the dark
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“We understood it time we lived in, and gave answers people believed in,” answered former prime minister Trygve Bratteli (1910-1984) when he was asked what was the secret behind the Labor Party’s massive dominance in post-war Norway. Today’s head of government cannot say the same.
The government has dragged his feet in the case of extremely high electricity prices in southern Norway. Now the scheme with electricity support for households is being tinkered with, and the government has a plan to have a plan also for companies that have a dark view of the future. All while waiting for the Energy Commission to come up with its report in December, and the danger of electricity rationing towards the end of winter is real.
While “closely monitored”, and without anyone in charge in the government actually addressing the real problem: That Norway has given up the right to control the “heritage silver” by saying yes to foreign cables to Germany and Great Britain, and joining ACER, the EU’s energy agency. This means that Norway must follow the prices on the EU’s power exchange. It is supply and demand, i.e. capitalism in its purest and rawest form. The market decides. The only answer the Prime Minister has to give is that it will get worse. And it will last.
All the more surprising is it then that one of Norway’s biggest and most cynical capitalists, investor Øystein Stray Spetalen, points out in Dagbladet that the social democrat Jonas Gahr Støre and “this country that we are so fond of” guru Trygve Slagsvold Vedum should have said a long time ago: That must be heavy, government regulation of such a fundamentally important natural resource as electricity.
The multi-millionaire points out that the Norwegian welfare state is historically based on access to cheap electricity, enshrined in the concession laws over 100 years ago. The oil adventure in recent times is based on the same principles, namely state ownership and control. But the export cables and the free electricity market violate these principles. And that is the crux of the problem. It is absolutely necessary in a successful capitalist economy that important infrastructure is controlled by the state, Spetalen points out. He is completely in line with the Red and SV parties. Karl Marx could not have said it better.
While playing the leader of Ap, who should have learned something from his predecessor Bratteli, plagiarized that it is the war in Ukraine that is to blame. Of course, that is part of the truth, but not all of it. The current power regime has served Norway well, Støre believes, power exports are defended and neither power cables nor the agreement with ACER should be touched. At the same time, far too many people look forward with dread to winter, when the panel ovens have to be turned up. The power industry is complicated, and various measures have both advantages and disadvantages. But at the bottom it must lie that Norway must take back control over the country’s natural resources. First and foremost, secure your own country’s supply, then sell if there is surplus power to send out of the country.
Of course it should been the Labor Party, which otherwise opposes privatization and profit in both schools and health, which stepped in to take back control of Norwegian hydropower. But while a super-capitalist has set the light, Ap’s management is still stumbling around in the dark.