A red brick building with a gray cooling tower in the harbor of the city of Malmö has become one of the symbols of Sweden’s current preparations for a possible military clash with the Russian army. A few years ago, it was expected that part of the preserved gas power plant near the Oresund Strait would be dismantled and transported to new owners overseas. However, that has changed, writes Bloomberg.
However, the ongoing war in Ukraine changed all the plans at the time and turned Sweden’s defense policy upside down. The need to ensure energy security is also related to this. It is the gas-fired power plant in Malmö that is to play an important role in this effort. Meanwhile, the Swedish government is anxiously watching if and whether the conflict in Ukraine will also move to the Baltics.
The store eventually sold out
The 450 megawatt power plant in Malmö is primarily powered by gas, but can also burn diesel. It is owned by the German energy giant Uniper, which closed the facility in 2016. At that time, electricity prices in Sweden fell significantly and the operation was not profitable enough. That is also why negotiations on the sale to the Dutch company PACO Holding began in 2021.
Thanks to the operation of this power plant, it is expected that Malmö will be independent of the distribution network in the coming years. The operator of the Swedish distribution network there has similar plans for the capital Stockholm or Gothenburg.
However, due to the war in Ukraine, this deal was ultimately not completed, and the Swedish grid operator ordered the German company Uniper to withdraw from it and put the plant on standby until the end of the current decade. As compensation, the operator of Uniper offered a total of 1.1 billion Swedish crowns (roughly 2.4 billion crowns), which was one of the first major investments of the Swedish state in energy security since the beginning of the Russian war. The campus from 2009 should be fully functional again in 2025.
“We hope that we will never find ourselves in a situation where we use these reserve capacities. But we have to be sure that replacement sources are available,” says Mikael Nilsson, one of the current managers of the gas plant in the city of Malmö.
War is a concern
In addition to strengthening personnel capacities in the army, Sweden’s political leadership is currently trying to modernize roads, railway networks, ports, hospitals, shelters and other infrastructure that is important during war. Energy resources are also related to this. The Swedish energy mix is significantly dependent on a combination of wind, hydro and nuclear energy. However, experts believe that the distribution network is particularly vulnerable to possible sabotage in the European context, and therefore changes are in order.
“Critical infrastructure is often the main target during war,” educator Vera van Zoestová, who teaches at the Swedish Defense University in Uppsala, told Bloomberg.
An example is Russian aggression in Ukraine. The World Bank reports that Russia has damaged more than half of its energy resources since the start of a full-scale invasion in 2022. A number of cities and entire regions repeatedly fall into darkness because of this, depriving Ukrainians of heat supplies during harsh winters.
Following the example of the Finns
Sweden faced the ongoing war in Ukraine head on. It has called in roughly a thousand qualified Šlidís, who help protect energy supplies. Monitoring is being strengthened, stronger and more durable fences are being built. “It’s about building enough capacity to operate normally even during a potential crisis,” Erik Nordman, the grid operator’s security director, says of the plans.
In total, the Swedish government allocated about SEK 5.5 billion in the 2024 budget for the construction and expansion of civil defense, which translates to roughly SEK 11.7 billion. This is about three times more than in 2021, a year before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukrainian territory.
However, the estimated amount that Sweden currently needs in the civil defense sector is higher. “It doesn’t matter how strong our army is if we don’t manage to sufficiently strengthen the critical infrastructure as well,” comments on the vision and goals of the Swedish Army Commander-in-Chief Micael Byden.
Among other things, Sweden learns from neighboring Finland, which is a model for many countries in the European Union. The country shares a border with Russia and over several decades has built and continues to maintain a robust civil defense infrastructure on it, teaching civilians how to respond in the event of a threat.
