On Sunday, Mattias Jonsson, an electricity market analysis manager at Sweden’s grid operator, Svenska kraftnat, said current projections show Sweden is on track to experience a shortage of electricity by 2027 due to the present rate of increase in industrial power demand outstripping the rate of increase of production capacity.

The analysis includes data from the latest report prepared by Sweden’s energy agency, working together with the state’s regulatory bodies – the Swedish Transport Agency, the Energy Markets Inspectorate, and Svenska krafrnat.

In an interview with SVT, the Swedish national public television broadcaster, Johansson said, “We see a risk that large industrial investments won’t be possible if we do not get a faster expansion of electricity production started.”

According to a five-year outlook report which was released earlier this week, after years of relatively steady levels of consumption, Sweden’s power consumption had begun to rise as power availability increased.

Now, current projections indicate that the nation’s power consumption may as much as double by 2035. Over the short term, analysts expect that onshore wind power will offer a technically and economically feasible solution. However they note that over the long term, the nation is going to need a quantity of power which will only be able to be supplied by new nuclear power facilities. Still the report recommends also expanding the nation’s existing wind power generation capacity as well.

Data indicates that Sweden will expand electricity generation by roughly 17 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2027, as consumption grows by 44 TWh. In that time the current energy surplus the nation produces of 33 TWh, will diminish to roughly 6 TWh.

The report predicts that electricity consumption in Finland will increase slightly, although production would expand also, which would aid the nation to progress from deficit to surplus. Meanwhile, it is expected that in Denmark, solar and wind energy generation would grow at a rate which would keep pace with demand. Norway though, is projected to transition from excess production to deficit.

Overall, the report finds that in the Nordic region as a whole, the current electricity surplus will decrease from 38 TWh in 2023, to 13 TWh in 2027. It is expected the lower levels of energy reserve will produce larger power deficiencies during adverse weather events.