Swedish Minister: Vattenfall Considering Sale of Operations Outside Sweden

German news site Der Tagesspiegel is reporting that Swedish power generation company Vattenfall is seeking to sell its operations outside Sweden as early as next year.

The article quotes Swedish financial minister Peter Norman as a source for this story:

He pointed to the problems with the brown coal in Germany, the nuclear phase and the affair of the Dutch gas too expensive purchased Nuon. In retrospect, one could say it was therefore a mistake to enter these markets Norman said.

Apparently the comments have caused a stir with unions who have demanded clarification about the matter. A spokesperson from Vattenfall stated that there were ‘no concrete plans’ to sell Vattenfall’s operations outside Sweden.

Vattenfall announced in July that it would split itself into two units — one for Sweden, and one for the rest of Europe. Reuters reported last month that

Scandinavia’s biggest utility is under pressure at home to retrench to its better-performing Scandinavian markets after being wrong-footed by a prolonged economic downturn across much of Europe and a drive in Germany towards renewable energy.

Its European acquisitions have saddled it with 158 billion Swedish crowns ($24 billion) in debt and led to major writedowns.

Vattenfall has also stated that it will be selling an offshore wind park in the Irish sea.

Vattenfall is of interest to people following the E-Cat story because it is one power company that has publicly shown interest in the possibility of using the E-Cat for power generation. It is a member of the Elforsk group, and one of its employees co-wrote the recent Elforsk paper reviewing the status of LENR technology. There’s no evidence presented here that consideration of LENR as a power source has anything to do with this possible move to sell any of its operations outside Sweden, but I’m sure there’ll be some speculation about that.