Introduction

The Swepol submarine interconnector cable between Poland and Sweden was established based on a series of contracts in the mid-1990s between Vattenfall and PSE. Vattenfall electricity - integrated with Nordpool - is essentially hydro-based, Polish coal-based. In essence, Vattenfall provided the finance and in exchange PSE undertook to purchase on a long-term, fixed-price basis electricity from Vattenfall. These contracts were exposed to considerable pressure from a number of change in the relevant context: Poland needed less electricity than forecast and was actually able to ...