How many projects need to fail in the Nordics before we rethink our strategy?

How many more megaprojects in the Nordic region need to fail before we rethink our strategy?

I am not here to judge whether the battery industry is the right future for this region. Nor is it my goal to tell the Nordics which industries they should or shouldn't pursue. Instead, I want to use these recent failures to start a necessary debate: Are the methods we are using actually helping us achieve our goals?

Perhaps the first question we should ask is: Nordics, what are you actually trying to achieve?

It’s hard to tell because behind every project, there is a mix of disconnected and often contradictory stories. So, I have to ask:

• Are you trying to reindustrialize the region?
• Are you trying to replace "legacy" industries with new ones?
• Or are you simply trying to promote entrepreneurship and create jobs?

This confusion is exactly why we are seeing so many failures. Let’s look at why the current methods don't match the economic reality for each of these goals:

1. If the goal is reindustrialization, the current approach fails because of a contradiction in trade policy. To bring industry back, local production must be able to compete with the rest of the world. If a country keeps costs high through strict regulations and high labor costs, but also allows "free trade" with low-cost foreign competitors, local factories will never survive.

Economically, there are only two ways to make this work: significantly lower the costs of production or introduce protectionist measures (like tariffs). By choosing neither and trying to plan costs internally while maintaining free trade, the result isn't real growth. It is simply burning through the wealth created by other sectors to fund factories that cannot stand on their own

2. If the goal is replacing legacy industries, this approach fails because it ignores how capital actually moves. A technological transition works when the new sector is more productive than the old one. In a healthy economy, resources move naturally toward where they create the most value.

Forcing the shutdown of profitable sectors (like oil and gas in Norway) to fund sectors that are currently losing money moves resources from efficiency to inefficiency. When this shift is forced by "ethical mandates" (where the state tells consumers what is "good" or "bad" to buy) before the new technology is actually better or cheaper, it creates a system that depends entirely on external funding. This is why, as soon as interest rates rise, these projects collapse. They lack a solid economic foundation

3. If the goal is job creation and entrepreneurship, the current method changes the very nature of what an entrepreneur does. Usually, an entrepreneur’s job is to find what customers need and risk their own money to provide it.

However, when the State decides which sectors should get the money, entrepreneurs stop looking for customers and start looking for ways to get public funding. The market process of "discovery" is replaced by a model of "following government directives." This fails because investment doesn't go where the public wants it, but where the government points it. This creates jobs that only exist as long as the subsidies keep flowing, rather than jobs based on real value

You need to remember that the state is not an omnipotent god that knows everything and knows best. It is just a tool. It has enormous power, but that power by itself does not lead to progress or achieve wealth. It is just a tool to enforce a certain system, a certain strategy, or a certain ideology

We must stop relying on the tool and start questioning the system itself 

It is time to rethink the strategies and the set of beliefs the Nordic countries are operating under