According to Busch, Sweden’s electricity system was entering a tight spot due to one nuclear reactor at Oskarshamn going down for repairs for ten days on Friday, one reactor at Ringhals going down for repairs until February, and another Ringhals reactor going down for repairs over the weekend.
She stated, “In southern Sweden, there is a greater risk of power cuts and the risk of a higher electricity price.”
She then urged citizens to do whatever they could to lessen their power risk and improve the system’s resilience.
She stated, “If we can cut our electricity use by 2%, the risk of power outages goes down significantly. That’s about how much we can save ourselves just in the housing sector by cutting or reducing our use of hot water by half or cutting our use of one degree.”
“We must do everything in our power to flatten the curve.” I understand this is extreme. After enduring a difficult, prolonged, and drawn-out pandemic in which everyone’s contribution was essential, we now face another crisis in which individual actions can have an impact.
“I’m very grateful to every household that did everything they could this fall to reduce their use of electricity. The crisis has been affected by it,” she continued.
She stated that “every kilowatt counts” and that the government would continue its nationwide campaign to conserve electricity.
Ulf Kristersson, Sweden’s prime minister, said before Busch spoke that the electricity system crisis was “relatively acute.” Lotta Medelius-Bredhe, director general of Svenska Kraftnät, Sweden’s grid operator, said that power outages were unlikely.
She stated, “This is not something that we see as really looming,” but she acknowledged that “extremely high prices” would be charged.
On Wednesday, Nobel Literature Prize winner Annie Ernaux issued a warning about a perilous ideology that is spreading throughout Europe amid the conflict in Ukraine with the goal of excluding the weakest members of society and restricting women’s reproductive rights.
Ernaux stated in her Nobel lecture in Stockholm prior to Saturday’s gala prize ceremony, “In Europe, an ideology of withdrawal and closure is on the rise, still concealed by the violence of an imperialist war waged by the dictator at the head of Russia.”
It was “steadily gaining ground in hitherto democratic countries,” according to Ernaux.
The 82-year-old stated, “This ideology requires a duty of extreme vigilance, for me and all those for whom the value of a human being is always and everywhere the same.” It is based on the exclusion of foreigners and immigrants, the abandonment of the economically weak, and the surveillance of women’s bodies.
In October, the jury said that Ernaux, a feminist icon, was given the Nobel Prize this year for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.”
Her writing frequently casts a critical eye on social structures and draws heavily on her own personal experiences with class and gender.
She also talked about the mid-September protests in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the Tehran morality police.
Ernaux stated that she began writing about her own experiences as a way to “enable beings to reimagine themselves” and “contribute to change.”
“We see it today in the revolt of women who have found the words to disrupt male power and have risen up, as in Iran, against its most archaic form.” These women have found the words to do so.
She mentioned that “writers and intellectuals positioned themselves in relation to French politics and became involved in social struggles as a matter of course” as she was growing up among the postwar generation.
“To focus on one’s art is a temptation in today’s world, where the multiplicity of information sources and the speed at which images flash by condition a form of indifference.”
She expressed the hope that her winning the Nobel Prize would serve as “a sign of hope for all female writers,” noting that these authors “have not yet gained legitimacy as producers of written works.”
While Sweden is warming to cut the hazard of blackouts, neighboring Finland is dealing with traffic tension on its line with Russia.
