No, Liz doesn’t want electricity prices to go up

debate

This is a discussion post. The entry was written by an external contributor, and the quality is guaranteed by the debate department of Aftenbladet. Opinions and analyzes are the author’s own.

In a timely Tory-Century political debate over the development of a data center in Kalberg, Betuel Freiland in a discussion post in Aftenbladet gives a story about Liz, electricity prices and the energy situation in the region that cannot go unchallenged.

Lycee never had a hidden agenda to raise electricity rates. We are a 100 percent municipal owned company, and most of what we earn (70-80 percent) we pay in taxes to the state. And we pay the rest of the profits in the form of profits to the municipalities that own us and reinvest in infrastructure. Our owners would never have accepted that Lyse tried so hard to increase costs for residents and businesses in the area. We don’t do that today, and we didn’t either when Froeland worked with economics and analysis at Liss many years ago.

While others have sold all or part of the energy company to the state, the municipalities in our region have chosen to be the long-term owners of the energy and communications group Lyse. This is because they want the company to contribute to business development and competitiveness by developing socially significant infrastructure. Ownership has ensured municipalities increased profits in welfare production for more than 20 years. Lyse has always used the part of the profit that is not paid out as investment dividend.

More energy

Froiland seems to have a theory that Liz should have worked in the long run to increase consumption and limit access to energy in order to drive up energy prices. On the contrary, over the past 20 years, Lees has been working to add more energy.

Among other things, we have built a new power station in Lysiputn 2, a new power station in Priava, a new power station in Ravos in Serra Kvina, and the rehabilitation of the Modal power station is still ongoing. For 20 years, we have contributed to the region’s access to the largest natural gas network in the country. We have built district heating infrastructure to protect the heat from burning waste, and now we will produce more biogas to reduce emissions by replacing natural gas in our grid. In addition, we are working on one of our largest investments ever: the hydroelectric development in Röldal-Söldal. We have done all this to increase energy production in the region, and in this way we contribute to lower prices and increase the diversity of energy supplies.

The wind power development at Berkrim – which Froiland claims Lycee was against, because it would drive down prices – we were co-owners until we sold it in 2016. Our strategy then was to let others do the project, and instead focused our attention on power development hydroelectric.

Transfer infrastructure

Frøyland is right that Lyse has acted as a facilitator for locating data centers in our region, but this was aimed at creating more jobs and strengthening digital infrastructure in the region. Not because we have a long-term plan to increase electricity prices. The global increase in data traffic is massive and is constantly increasing. With the increasing need to manipulate, store and process data, it depends on the digital infrastructure being built in place if society is to continue to be digitized. Data centers are critical infrastructure, and we think it makes sense to store data in Norway or Europe.

At Lyse, we believe that whatever can be electrified will be electrified, and whatever can be digitized will be digitized. Hence our mission is to provide the necessary infrastructure and renewable energy to achieve this. Everyone must be certain that Lyse will contribute as much as we can to the normalization of electricity prices, and to business development in our region. And we will do it with what we know best and as we have done for over 100 years. Develop more renewable energy and socially significant infrastructure.