This blame game is all about supporting current political narratives about nuclear power etc. It's not really about the energy crisis.<p>Sweden's energy mess is all about 'free markets'. Back in the old days the state-run energy companies in Sweden produced an overabundance of electricity, mostly from hydro, making Sweden one of the cheapest electricity countries in the world. It was really common to replace wood burners with direct electric radiators in old houses across Sweden.<p>Then the British conservative party (equiv to the current Swedish administration who the article is about), heavily into privatisation, started selling the public utilities. One thing they did was split network ownership from supplier, so you have one company owning trains and another owning track, and the same for electric net vs generation etc. This created a kind of artificial market, because you can't actually choose with your feet what company has power lines to your house etc. So they invented energy markets and mock auctions and things.<p>Of course in hindsight all those privatisation thingies are no longer popular. But at the time the rest of Europe thought 'oh that's a good idea!'<p>Within Sweden the electricity is generally generated in the north and consumed in the south and the socialist governments with their nationalised utilitieshad a fixed cost in the whole country.<p>Interestingly it was the Danes who complained because they border the south of Sweden and can't generate electricity nearly so cheaply so the cheap cost of Swedish electricity was 'unfair competition'. In 2011 the Swedes had to scrap their fixed one-price policy and introduce 'energy zones' that get increasingly more expensive as you approach Denmark.<p>Fast forward to today and we have Sweden producing more energy than it consumes, but the utility companies get more money from selling that abroad than at home, meaning the Swedes have to buy their electricity from abroad! We basically logically from a market perspective have electricty flowing out of Sweden to be sold by the utility companies and then back into Sweden to be consumed by households.<p>And we wonder why there is another winter fuel price shock warning in the offing!