Plug-in holiday
Snappy stand-first that won’t make the reader any the wiser about what the article is about. But will make them laugh
Shore-side power has become a major focus of the cruise industry’s efforts in recent years to reduce its environmental impact. It should come as no surprise, then, that Ports of Stockholm, the port authority overseeing the Swedish capital’s three main ports, made a big deal out it when it inaugurated the country’s on-shore power supply (or OPS) facility for international cruise ships on 17 September, making Stockholm the first port in Sweden—and one of just a handful in Europe—to allow cruise ships to power down their engines while in port.
Unlike a lot of other environmental initiatives, the benefits of on-shore power are immediately visible. For ships, being able to plug in, rather than run their engines, means no exhaust belching out of their smokestacks while in port.
This is because, in addition to propulsion, the diesel-electric engines that power most modern cruise ships also generate electricity. Often, more than half of an engine’s output is used for things like charging phones and keeping the lights on. Those are things that cannot be shut off entirely when the ships are in port.
Being able to plug in, more or less the way you would plug in an electric car, means less air pollution in the immediate vicinity of the ship, just as it also cuts out the noise the running engines generate. In places where the power is generated using renewable energy—such as Sweden’s hydroelectric or wind power—switching to on-shore electricity from on-board bunker brings down carbon pollution.
For now, about half of the cruise ships that land at one of Port of Stockholms’ ports can connect to electricity. This is more than double the amount that could a few years ago. By 2028, three quarters of the world’s cruise ships are expected to be able to plug in, according to CLIA, an industry group.
For cruise operators, there is an incentive in being a first mover, if it makes it possible to attract those who are turned off by the industry’s tarnished image. The promise of financial gain will undoubtedly speed the process along, but ports themselves can also play a role, either by directly mandating that ships be able plug in or by holding carrots.
Ports of Stockholm, for example, already offers discounts on port fees for ships that exceed emissions standards for carbon dioxide and soot. These could be extended to include on-shore power.
Paying ships to run cleaner makes more than just environmental logic, according to Jens Holm, the chair of the Ports of Stockholm board. It and three other Baltic Sea ports, Copenhagen/Malmö, Aarhus and Helsinki, all received funding from the EU to install OPS—amounting to 20% of the total €76mn the four port authorities will spend to do so—and he reckons this can help the Baltic Sea region market itself as a green cruise destination.
Mixing water and electricity may, in this case at least, not be such a bad idea after all.
Asset managers with Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest financial institution, may now place investors’ money in nearly all European firms working in the defence industry, after it removed 30 firms from its blacklist earlier this month, leaving only producers of the most controversial weapons out of bounds.
The decision comes amidst growing European concerns about whether it can protect itself from a Russian attack, should America not live up to its commitment as a member of Nato. It also comes as European countries, looking to build up their defences after years of neglect, are now making it easy for their militaries to spend—and giving them plenty of money to do so. Denmark, for example, is expected to increase its defence spending from the current 2% of GDP to perhaps 5% in the coming years. Meanwhile the European Commission in March said it was making €800 billion available for defence spending.
For investors, such measures provide moral backing to the interest they had already begun showing the defence industry. After years of favouring funds that made a virtue of shunning arms, investors, according to Danske Bank, have more than doubled the amount of money going into defence-related firms over the past two years.
Despite its about face, Danske Bank is keeping its restrictions on controversial weapons banned by international conventions, including cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines and biological and chemical weapons. Similarly, it says it will continue to offer investment options for those who prefer their capitalism with a streak of pacifism. All’s fair in investment and in war.
The home guard on Bornholm this week sent out letters to 250 of its former members, asking them to consider rejoining the volunteer force, which currently numbers 300. It is a mission that will not be hard to complete: concerns about Moscow’s next move after Ukraine has led to a surge in the number of home-guard members nationwide. Last year, the number of new volunteers increased 35% from the previous year, the most in over four decades.
More military spending will also help. Copenhagen has vastly increased its defence budget in recent years. Only a fraction of this will go to the home guard, but the money will be used directly on the types of things that matter most to soldiers: guns, body armour and sleeping bags.
For islanders, the big motivator is geography. Being far removed from Denmark proper and having been left to fend for itself in the past has left its mark on islanders, and their home guard unit can operate with a greater degree of autonomy than units elsewhere in Denmark. Some residents and military experts want the military to take it a step further and reactivate Bornholms Værn, a volunteer militia that had existed for 400 years until it was disbanded in 2000.
Prior to Russian invasion of Ukraine, the home guard was mostly tasked with helping civil authorities and the police. Today, support for the regular army is increasingly being added to those duties, and the local commander expects more missions of that sort in the years to come. To keep up, he must keep the home guard returning.
Covering some 8 million hectares, forested areas in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania make up about half of the three countries’ land area in total. That is comparatively less than in Sweden, where its 28 million hectares account for more than two thirds of its land. Nevertheless, the Swedish forestry industry imports up to 40% of its timber from the Baltics.
Part of Swedish firms’ interest in Baltic forests stems from their productivity and their makeup. Latvia, for example, stands out for its high proportion of deciduous trees, such as birch, particularly compared with Sweden, where pine dominates. Baltic forests have something else going for them, too: they are expanding; in the past century, their area has increased by more than half.
In spite of that, the price of Baltic forestland has gone up. In 2000, a hectare of went for €500. Today, it gets €3,700. Much of the increase has been fuelled by Swedish forest companies buying up land. But, should their interest weaken (in January, Södra Skogsägarna, a Swedish firm that is the largest forest owner in the three Baltic countries, announced plans to divest its Baltic holdings), it need not result in a fall in prices.
Danske Bank, a Danish financial institution whose Swedish subsidiary follows the forestry industry, reckons that, unlike in Sweden and Finland, the price of Baltic forestland does not yet take into account factors like its potential for carbon sequestration, its suitability for solar arrays or wind turbines, or its recreational value. All of those could support further price increases, it concludes, even if the Swedes stop seeing Baltic forests solely for their trees.
An experiment in Rønne, on Bornholm, that has seen three streetlights doubling as charging points for electric cars since last May is being wound down after demonstrating its potential.
To date, there have been over 500 charging sessions. That, according to Beof, the island’s power company, is enough for it to conclude that the idea of integrating charging points into urban infrastructure is viable.
Beof and Spirii, which installs and runs charging kit, have been running the year-long project with the permission of the island council. Its members must now decide whether to make charging points a permanent fixture on street lights. Beof’s advice is that they should, since it would make it easy to build-out a charging network, without having to add new infrastructure to an often-cluttered cityscape.
For councils elsewhere considering something similar, the use rate is a good argument in favour of proceeding, but Beof underscores the need for clear guidelines and healthy portion of foresight. Without them, the idea is likely to short-circuit.
German customs authorities have confiscated the Eventin, a tanker linked to the Kremlin’s “shadow fleet”, along with its cargo of approximately 100,000 tons of crude oil. The ship was impounded in January and its seizure comes after the EU placed it on its sanctions list.
The seizure is a notable escalation in the enforcement of sanctions against Moscow’s attempts to get around restrictions on its oil trade. The “shadow fleet” of vessels flying flags other than the Russian is used to transport oil. It emerged shortly after Moscow’s unprovoked 2022 attack on Ukraine in response to Western sanctions against the Russian oil industry.
Recently the fleet’s role in wreaking havoc on subsea infrastructure has been getting a lot of attention. Environmentalists, for their part, fret that the ships are an oil spill waiting to happen; they are old, poorly kept and lack proper insurance. The Eventin was found floating adrift in January off the island of Rügen.
Germany’s seizure sends a message to Moscow and its cronies who help it to bypass sanctions. But Berlin must now carefully consider its next move: the confiscation order means that the vessel and its cargo now belong to the German state. Other countries in the Baltic will be keeping a close eye on what it does—and how the Kremlin reacts—to keep the shadow fleet in check.
Bornholm should table its proposed industry estate until Copenhagen decides whether it will go ahead with its plans to build the converter station for two off-shore wind farms that would power the facility, an island council committee says.
A vote will be put before the full council later this month, but Jacob Trøst, the mayor, believes the national government’s decision in January to wait until after the German federal election to make its final decision makes proceeding impractical.
It is hoped that Germany will purchase the majority of the 3 megawatts of electricity the wind farms would produce. The rest is expected to be sent to eastern Denmark, but Bornholm would like some of it to be used to power an industry estate that would act as a crucible for energy start-ups.
Island businesses want work on the industry estate to continue. Questions like where it would be placed and when it would come on-line may be unanswerable at the moment, but, argues Michael Almeborg, the chair of the local chapter of DI, that should not stop the council from lining up the firms who will want to hear the answers when the council finally has them.
One of the ironies of Bornholm’s power grid is that, even though most of the island’s electricity is generated on the island, it is not until the undersea cable linking it to Sweden cuts out that Beof, the local power company, goes into island mode. Sadly for the environment, this means decoupling the wind turbines that give the island most of its energy and firing up four diesel-powered generators. The thinking is that green ambitions are good, but the 25 megawatts of stable energy the generators can deliver are critical for keeping the grid stable.
In 2026, however, Beof will flip the switch on a 10 megawatt battery that will help maintain grid stability, and not just in the event of an emergency. Developed with Hitachi Energy, the battery addresses the fundamental challenge that arises when relying on unpredictable renewable energy to meet predictable demand. Since no-one is talking about going back to oil or coal, the only supply-side option is to come up with a way balance the two. The Bornholm battery will accomplish this by absorbing excess electricity when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining, and then deliver it back when it is needed.
The battery’s importance extends beyond local energy needs. Energinet, the national grid operator, views such technologies as essential for future energy systems, and Bornholm could provide a model. In a world that is going green, island mode may soon become the new black.
Germany and its Baltic allies have flatly rejected suggestions that delivery of Russian gas via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline may resume. Rumours that such a plan are afoot emerged on Sunday, when the Financial Times, a news outlet, reported that a former boss of Gazprom, the Russian firm that operated the pipeline, was working to revive the €11 billion project.
To its boosters, the pipeline running along the floor of the Baltic Sea was a sign that Russia was securely tethered to Europe and the west. Its detractors, both those who remained unconvinced that Moscow was indeed an ally, as well as greens agitating for lower, greener energy consumption, were never sold on the first Nord Stream, let alone its sequel.
But when both were damaged by sabotage in September 2022 (by whom remains unknown), European countries, and Germany in particular, rushed to break their energy ties to Russia: today, Norway is Germany’s primary gas supplier, and, on 8 February, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania broke a power connection to Russia that dates back to the Soviet Union when they connected themselves to the EU grid.
Nothing suggests anyone is interested going back. “Independence from Russian gas is of strategic importance,” the German economy ministry insisted in its denial that Berlin was talking to Moscow about re-opening Nord Stream 2. With Europeans now looking to secure their future, it would appear that the era of Russian gas has passed.
Denmark’s largest retailer will purchase Rimi, a Baltic retail chain, Salling Group and ICA Gruppen, the chain’s current owner, announced today. The deal makes Salling one of the largest supermarket operators in the Baltic region.
According to ICA Gruppen, the value of Rimi’s retail business in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is around €1.3 billion.
Salling will take over €500 million of Rimi Baltic’s debt, which is mainly made up of lease liabilities. The transaction will increase the company’s capital by €630 million and generate cash inflows of €810 million.
Salling said the acquisition of Rimi is the largest transaction its history. It will now own 2,100 supermarkets in the Baltic states, Denmark, Germany and Poland.
Helsinki and Copenhagen are prepared to pool more of their resources in response to an increasingly tense situation in the Baltic Sea region, members of the cabinet from the two countries said today.
Already allied militarily through Nato and Nordefco, a Nordic defence alliance, the two countries’ defence ministers called for a deeper partnership in the Baltic and Nordic regions to deter Russian agression. Both countries make use of the F-35 fighter jet, and one proposal put forth was the Danish purchase of a refuelling plane that could service all of the Nordic countries.
Shared concern about hybrid attacks, including against computer systems in the two countries and undersea infrastructure in the Baltic, also requires authorities in both countries to be in lock step, according to a statement issued by the Finnish interior ministry and the Danish civil-defence ministry.
Today’s announcement comes as the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is preparing to publish its own union-wide strategies for civil defence, internal security and defence. All three issues were added to Brussels’ remit earlier this year.