· 9 min read
Six months after I outlined Sweden’s energy gamble and a clear geothermal opportunity, geothermal still barely registers in the debate as we circle tech choices and grid bottlenecks. The European Commission’s recent announcement makes the case to revisit the issue.
In Homer’s Odyssey, following Circe’s advice, Ulysses has himself tied to the mast and forbids his men to untie him. The crew has beeswax in their ears and cannot hear the Sirens. Ulysses listens alone as the ship sails safely past the rocks.
Twenty-eight centuries later, Europe seems to be playing the same scene again, only this time, the Sirens sing about nuclear renaissance and political certainty. And playing the role of Ulysses, we find Sweden, tied to its own mast of procedures, listening to the seductive voices of past solutions while the European Commission drags the ship toward a different horizon.
A continent in search of speed
On 8 October 2025, the European Commission referred Sweden to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to transpose the Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2023/2413. The legal language sounds technical, but the meaning is clear: Europe is tired of waiting. Brussels wants to accelerate renewable permitting to shorten the years-long odysseys of applications and consultations that have made Europe the land of caution rather than the land of pace.
Under the directive, every Member State was required to implement simplified procedures by 1 July 2024, including time limits for approvals and the presumption that renewable projects serve the “overriding public interest.” 27 countries were late, but Sweden, ironically, the land most associated with administrative order, was among the last to move at all. Now, the Commission has taken the unusual step of asking the Court to impose financial sanctions.
For many Europeans, this might appear as a mere bureaucratic squabble. However, it is more than that: it is a test of Europe’s resolve to reconcile law with urgency, caution with necessity. The war in Ukraine, the fragile grids of the Baltic, and the volatility of fossil markets all point to a single truth: the age of slow permits is over.
The paradox of the prudent
Interestingly, Sweden’s energy reputation was once untouchable. Hydropower and nuclear power built the backbone of a system that was stable, clean, and cheap. But stability can breed complacency. While other nations raced to diversify, Sweden tied itself to legal caution, environmental procedures, and public inquiries so detailed that even the Gods of Mount Olympus might have despaired at the paperwork.
Yes, this prudence has a noble origin. The Swedish model of governance is built on transparency, which we are proud of, as well as consultation and respect for local communities. These virtues have prevented many mistakes and ensured social trust. Yet these same virtues now risk becoming the rope that binds Ulysses to the mast. In an era of accelerating crises, delay itself becomes a sort of failure.
Meanwhile, the Sirens of energy security are singing ever louder. Their tune is familiar: build more nuclear, extend the lifetime of old reactors, and let tomorrow’s fission and fusion deliver salvation.
However, the financing stack for Sweden’s nuclear reboot is still more aspiration than arrangement. Swedish Parliament, “the Riksdag,” has okayed a state-support framework, and the government now talks about loans and price guarantees sized in the hundreds of billions (SEK), yet, even state-owned Vattenfall says the next decisive step is a state deal on “financing and risk-sharing,” not vendor selection.
Meanwhile, a government-appointed commission pegs the bill at roughly SEK 400 billion and implies heavy public backing, while Nordic market realities keep private investors skittish. Even Fortum, the energy company, has been blunt, stating that new nuclear isn’t bankable at today’s power prices. Against that backdrop, the 2035 timeline looks like a political date rather than a financeable one.
For some policymakers, it is a comforting melody, predictable, masculine, industrial, anchored in concrete and control. But Europe’s true challenge lies not in choosing one technology over another; it lies in the tempo of transformation. In how fast we can replace inertia with innovation.
The forgotten heat beneath our feet
Beneath Sweden’s bedrock lies a silent ally. Geothermal energy, the ancient warmth of the Earth’s crust, has the potential to deliver stable, round-the-clock baseload power with no smoke, no waste, and almost no visual footprint. Yet it remains largely untapped, often dismissed as something for Iceland’s geysers or distant volcanoes. What holds us back isn’t innovation, it’s aversion to drilling risk.
However, in partnership with Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and industry partners, one project is now assessing whether Sweden’s sedimentary south and crystalline shield can host high temperature geothermal systems for next generation deep drilling. It is also developing modular 5 MW units for communities, industry, and defence, with commercialization still at an early stage.
Deep drilling is expensive, very expensive, if you want to reach temperatures suitable for geothermal electricity, and this is the key risk from an investor’s standpoint. Still, modern drilling, modular design, and long-term offtake contracts can convert capex risk into a durable annuity of clean, dispatchable power. Modern drilling techniques make it feasible, and when measured against truly comparable options, dispatchable, low-carbon power available around the clock, geothermal’s economics and availability compare favourably. In plain terms, it works, it can be sited close to demand, and operate when wind and solar fall short in Sweden.
Such technologies, being developed and run abroad, validated through academic studies, modelling, and early feasibility work, could make Sweden a European, if not global, test bed for innovative next-generation geothermal, a source of energy that is renewable, secure, and locally produced. Yet, building even a single pilot plant means navigating a labyrinth of tenders and submitting repeated pleas for public investment, only to find that geothermal often “does not meet the criteria” in national tenders and funding calls. Development stalls, and promising projects die quietly in online portals, while politics and authorities tweak yesterday’s technologies and dream aloud of nuclear.
The irony is painful: the country that built the world’s most efficient bureaucracy has now become a prisoner of it.
The European tempo problem
Europe’s problem is not technological capacity; it is tempo. According to IEA, wind and solar are booming worldwide, powered by Chinese supply chains that now provide over 80 percent of global solar manufacturing and lead global wind-turbine installations, but inside the EU, permitting for new projects still commonly exceeds two years, with geothermal and hydro often taking much longer.
This glacial pace undermines Europe’s competitiveness and energy independence, all while the United States is unleashing billions through the Inflation Reduction Act, backing next-generation geothermal startups like Fervo Energy, Sage Geosystems, and Quaise Energy.
According to the Clean Air Task Force, global geothermal investment topped US$45 billion in 2023, with China contributing more than 70 percent of that total. Private capital seems to flow fast where policy moves fast: Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures has invested heavily in deep-drilling innovators, Google and Meta are signing geothermal PPAs for data centers, and in 2024, the US Department of the Air Force awarded its first contract to Sage Geosystems to determine whether a power plant using geopressured geothermal systems can generate the clean energy needed for a base to achieve energy resilience.
In contrast, Europe remains ensnared in its own procedural nets, consultations about consultations, while others turn ambition into electric power.
The new EU Directive 2023/2413 was supposed to change that, a kind of Green Schengen Zone for energy, so to speak, where renewable projects could cross administrative borders as freely as people cross physical ones.
However, implementation again fell to national authorities, constrained by legacy laws, slow permitting and financial bureaucracy, and by a persistent misconception among Swedish decision makers that deep geothermal is the same as district heating. It is not; it targets firm power and high temperature heat. The result is a paradox: Europe sets global climate goals but cannot build the infrastructure to meet them.
Sweden’s referral to the EU Court of Justice for failing to transpose the accelerated permitting directive for renewables is emblematic. The Commission’s move is not a punishment; it is a warning. Unless Europe learns to act with pace, the continent will be left importing not only energy but also ambition.
The mast of responsibility
Ulysses tied himself to the mast to resist temptation. Sweden, in contrast, ties itself out of fear, fear of political backlash for straying from the scripted energy narrative, fear of judicial review, fear of breaking its own procedural perfection. But perhaps it is time to loosen the ropes.
The climate crisis does not wait for committee meetings. The energy transition requires what the philosopher Günther Anders once called “moral acceleration”, the ability of ethics to keep up with the speed of technology.
Sweden’s reluctance to transpose the EU directive is not born of denial, but of habit. Yet habits, like masts, are meant to hold only so long as the storm rages. After that, one must sail.
A new social contract for energy
What would it mean for Europe, and Sweden, to enter the true land of pace? It would mean aligning permitting laws with planetary deadlines. It would mean replacing the illusion of control with the discipline of trust: trust in science, in local governance, in responsible innovation.
It would mean understanding that small, distributed power plants, geothermal wells, rooftop solar, and profitable local wind projects do not threaten the landscape; they sustain it. And it would mean accepting that “renewable” is not just a category of energy sources, but a way of thinking: iterative, adaptive, alive.
For Sweden, it is also a matter of national security. In the age of NATO integration, energy infrastructure is not only an environmental asset but a defensive one. Decentralized, underground geothermal units are harder to sabotage, easier to protect, and more resilient to cyberattacks than centralized grids. In this sense, accelerating renewable permits is not a bureaucratic duty; it is an act of sovereignty and energy independence.
The song we must learn to hear
In the myth, Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song and survived. He did not silence them; he learned from them. Perhaps Europe must do the same. The nuclear renaissance, the fossil nostalgia, the political inertia, all have their place in the political movement of energy transition. The point is not poetry; it is physics. There is baseload heat below us that we can use.
If the Green Deal is Europe’s Odyssey, then geothermal energy is its compass, silent, constant, and ancient. Sweden still has time to untie the knots and catch the wind.
But the sea is rising, and the Sirens are growing louder.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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