Published 31 August 2024 at 11.49
Domestic. The investments in so-called green industries will cost huge sums for the tax-financed actors who often participate and invest. That warning comes from national economist Magnus Henrekson, who advises state or municipal operations against entering with money.
Share the article
TwittraShare
Henrekson says in an interview with SD- the channel Riks that the investments to, for example, produce so-called fossil-free steel may well turn out to be wasted money.
And some energy-efficient businesses are not. The industrial investments are expected to consume up to half of the electricity that the whole of Sweden produces.
According to Henrekson, steel will certainly be produced fossil-free in the long term, but the large international steel companies are already engaged in research on this and, according to him, it is naive to think that Sweden, which is a small player, would already know how to do this in the most efficient way.
– It will be, for the country, a very big risk to take. It is about several hundred billion, says Magnus Henrekson to Riks.
In the interview with the SD channel, the researcher points to the risk that Norrland will get a new kind of depopulated area with relatively newly built ghost towns if the investments are not the success that the politicians have envisioned.
– Electricity is to be produced, and lots of it with electrical cables to be drawn there. Then communities must be expanded; housing, infrastructure, health centers, preschools, schools and so on. And the profitability of that depends on the success of these investments. Otherwise, we will only have heavily indebted municipalities, which already today have a weak fiscal power.
Magnus Henrekson reminds us that we have developed a business life in northern Sweden around the forest and the ore, which is dependent on cheap electricity. And when the “green transition” is to take out part of the electricity, the price will rise, and then the traditional Swedish basic industry is threatened.
– Then we waste it. There will be a minus item with all these other things that are struck out at the same time, and you have to include that in the calculation, says Henrekson to Riks.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.