Hansa PowerBridge Avslag (Regeringen och Svk, 2024)

The Swedish government’s rejection of the Hansa PowerBridge concession application (June 2024) and Svenska kraftnät’s decision to end the project (July 2024). Two short official texts, read together: the government’s press release and Svk’s news item.

The two documents

Summary

Svenska kraftnät and the German TSO 50Hertz ran a joint project for a new DC connection between Skåne (SE4) and Germany — from Hurva in Höörby kommun to Güstrow, about 700 MW as two parallel DC cables (Raw/dom-mmd-hansa-2022-04-13-extracted.txt, Mark- och miljödomstolen judgment of 13 April 2022, fetched 2026-09-26). The government is responsible for deciding the concession for the Swedish part, and decided to reject the application. Svk, seeing the government as the last instance in the concession review, then ended the project because the conditions for a concession were lacking.

Key claims

1. Decision date. Svk’s news item says the government decided on 13 June 2024; the government’s press release is dated 14 June 2024 and says “i dag” (today). The two texts do not reconcile the one-day difference.
2. Stated reason (government). The German electricity market does not work in a way that gives correct price signals to market actors — above all because Germany, unlike Sweden, is not divided into bidding zones that match the country’s significant bottlenecks.
3. Minister’s statement. Energy and business minister Ebba Busch is quoted saying southern Sweden, with a large production deficit, cannot be connected to Germany, where the market “does not function efficiently” today; doing so “would risk leading to higher prices and a more unstable electricity market in Sweden.”
4. Additional points in the press release. Most market actors see no need for the line today, and southern Sweden is already one of the bidding zones in Europe with the most foreign connections. The Tidöavtalet states that expansion of exporting cables should be paused until price differences between price areas have decreased significantly.
5. Not a permanent ban. Both texts say the decision does not prohibit a new Germany–Sweden connection if conditions change in the future.
6. Svk’s view. Svk says it sees large socioeconomic benefits of a new connection to Germany in the future (integration of the European market, security of supply, robustness), but that “the government has weighed in other aspects, including an increased risk of rising prices in especially southern Sweden.”

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