Like many other countries, Norway has been battling severe drought for months. After a dry winter and spring, water supplies in the worst-hit regions have shrunk by around half. The south of the country is particularly affected. The water reservoirs there for energy production are currently only 45 percent full, with an average of around 75 percent during the season.
In southern Norway, for example, 18 percent less hydroelectric power was produced this year. In the southwest – the most important area for energy production – electricity production even fell to an all-time low. However, the export connections to mainland Europe are also located there – and exports ran at full speed during the summer despite the drought. The population groans under exploding electricity prices, the pressure on politicians is growing.
Now the country’s centre-left government has decided that supplying Norway should be prioritized over exporting electricity. “The government will ensure that we take precautions that prioritize filling our hydroelectric reservoirs and security of electricity supply, and limit exports when water levels in the reservoirs drop to very low levels,” Oil and Energy Minister Terje Aasland said on Monday in a statement in Parliament.
Overall, hydropower accounts for 95 percent of Norway’s electricity generation, with heat and wind power making up the rest.
“The government considers the situation serious,” said Aasland. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Norway will have to ration electricity in the spring. And there is no end in sight to the problems: the climate crisis means that “we have to be prepared for more extreme fluctuations in precipitation, which in turn will have consequences for our weather-dependent energy system”.
According to the minister, the conversion of the European energy supply away from Russian gas will also have long-term consequences for Norway and make the entire European power grid less secure. Accordingly, they now want to take precautions – and these include a control mechanism that is intended to limit the options for exporting when the memory is less full. This should be worked out in the next few weeks. A similar proposal was only rejected in Parliament in the spring.
Record in – now controversial – exports
Norway’s problems with its electricity production are bad news for the whole of Europe, because in recent years the country has become one of the most important electricity exporters. A fifth of the production goes abroad, where cheap renewable energy is welcome. Thanks to above-average amounts of rain, Norway was already exporting large amounts of electricity at a low price in 2020, and the highest Norwegian electricity export of all time was then recorded in the previous year.
The largest buyers are Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. The last two states are supplied by submarine cables, which have only recently been put into operation. In 2022, exports to these countries rose sharply as a result – also due to the Ukraine war. According to the public broadcaster NRK, southern Norway in particular has come closer to the European electricity market, but also to its prices.
Part of the European electricity market
This makes exports controversial given the domestic situation and rising household electricity prices. There were also voices calling for an end to electricity exports. But in practice this is not an option. Although Norway is not a member of the EU, it is a member of the European electricity market and is also bound by bilateral agreements and regulations.
“We rely on our connections to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Finland and the Netherlands to work well,” says Aasland. Leaving the European electricity market is a “dangerous thought”, agrees Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Störe. The most recent decision to stop exports in emergencies could nevertheless deepen the problems of individual states in the overall situation of a critical energy winter – and put the solidarity of the states to the test, according to Bloomberg.