Problem solved.

After a while Helsinki announced that it adjusts water pricing by hiking the fixed part of a two-part tariff and lowering the variable part in such a way that, at current consumption, the total bill is about the same. They did not mention that such a structural change in prices is bound to increase the quantity consumed. Which within a few years would give them a larger income stream. Which the local city government will use. Local politicians prefer to tax people through utility bills rather than hiking the local tax, because many in the electorate do not realize that utility pricing is hidden taxation, not just covering the costs of the utilities.

The politicians need this “scare and guilt round” because it confuses a large enough part of the populace to feel somewhat guilty for using the resource. Guilty feeling is a great paralyzer of defences, a deflector of analytic thought (or any thought) on the subject, and a boost to willingness to pay. The minority that works the problem through will have no chance to raise a rebellion. One of those “Eat your veggies, people starve in Africa” - logical reasonings at work.

Since Fingrid (which owns the network) is owned by the power supplier companies (even EU has given a wag of finger on that), my bet is that after some public scare-talk on looming shortage of electricity, we will experience some increases in the market price of electricity and no shortages.

Lilius said to Leena Harkimo (kok) in a Talouselämä article a few years back that the electricity price of Finland “has to increase substantially to make the nuclear investment profitable”! And since the state owns a share of Fortum, Leena Harkimo had nothing bad to say about that. Fortum revenues give the state politicians spending monies, which even the right wing politicians cannot resist.

Finland is funny in this peculiar way: We want to think of ourselves as a western country and culture, but the way we identify with the collective and not with the individual I find very eastern. Even the market-minded Finns will tend to prefer wealthy national monopoly organizations to a population of wealthy individuals.

In any case, you say we are not sorting this out ourselves, but then you must have missed the seemingly endless articles in the newspapers about were the next 2 nuclear power stations will be placed (at least Hufvudstadsbladet and my local paper are seemingly obsessed with this subject). Ruotsinpyhtää/Strömfors seems to be the latest “in” location being considered. I am not sure I feel comfortable with all these nuclear reactors down the road from me, but it seems the forthcoming Greater Loviisa (in view of the referendum result this evening) is truly to be Finland’s nuclear capital. But the power companies seem to be tripping over themselves to build new power stations. So, I think we are on the way to sorting this out and, of course, I agree that relying on Russia is clearly not a good plan as their antics elsewhere have demonstrated.

In any case, I doubt we will get an rolling blackouts here. Probably come dangerously close to the limit, but I suspect Finn Grid is just trying to encourage the need to conserve energy to make that less likely by its strong message and also to perhaps increase the urgency in approving any of those new power station projects.

I hope the “city greens” will get their wines frozen.

At some point Finland needs to become a true market economy and rise its standard of living to european levels. Instead of always thinking of ways to use protectionism.

To pay for new power production capability needs a successful economy to pay for it. Then this issue will resolve itself. For now, Finland is still with its head stuck in its ass.