IESET.
Policies·se_nuclear_new_build_framework_2023

Swedish nuclear new-build framework and credit guarantees (2023-2024)

SWE·2023 present·M + KD + L cabinet with SD supportcandidate
movesenergy supply securitysectoral subsidysectoral licensing

What the policy did

Legislative and regulatory framework enabling new nuclear reactor construction, reversing the pre-2022 phase-out posture. Includes removal of the two-reactor cap (from 1 January 2024), permission for new sites beyond the three historical locations, and a credit-guarantee financing model (Finansieringsmodell för ny kärnkraft) providing state loan guarantees up to 400 billion SEK. Target: 2500 MW new capacity by 2035 and major expansion by 2045.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
energy supply security
regulatory.energy_supply_security
Policy posture toward energy supply security — domestic production capacity, import diversification, strategic reserves, nuclear stance, fossil-fuel mix discipline.
increased · strong
higher supply-security posture (diversified, strategic reserves)
Explicit nuclear new-build mandate with state financing backstop.
sectoral subsidy
fiscal.sectoral_subsidy
Targeted industrial and sectoral subsidies (renewable energy, chip manufacturing, agriculture, green hydrogen, etc).
increased · moderate
expanded sectoral subsidies
Credit guarantees and state-backed financing for reactor construction.
sectoral licensing
regulatory.sectoral_licensing
Sector-specific licensing regimes, concentration / quota allocation, state-controlled entry (energy, telecoms, healthcare, banking).
decreased · moderate
looser licensing, more open entry
Removed two-reactor cap and site restrictions.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Germany's industrial electricity prices diverged upward from a basket of comparable industrial peers (United States, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland) after the 2011 Energiewende pivot and the gap widened further through the 2014 nuclear-phase-out milestones and the 2022 gas crisis.
german_energiewende_industrial_cost_trajectoryinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
refuted — Germany's industrial GVA gap on 2015-2020 average is +0.095 log (wrong sign for industrial-cost-penalty story), placebo p=0.4444444444444444.
refuted
Among high-income economies 1990-2020, services-sector competition — measured by low barriers to entry, low incumbent-protection scores, and high churn in retail, transport, communications, and professional services — predicts long-run prosperity (real GDP per capita growth and labour-productivity growth) better than manufacturing-specific industrial policy spending.
sectoral_competition_services_productivityinferred
viaregulatory.sectoral_licensingfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
PARTIAL — coef=+0.000842, p=0.361 (above α=0.05); direction inconclusive
partial
German industrial gross value added, manufacturing output, and real household income diverged materially from a synthetic-Germany donor- pool counterfactual over 2018-2025, and a variance decomposition across candidate channels attributes the majority of the divergence to regulatory-channel factors (Environmental Policy Stringency index increase post-2017, nuclear-phase-out schedule, single-supplier Russian gas dependency lock-in, industrial emission and reporting rules) rather than to fiscal-channel factors (general government consumption and tax burden were broadly stable across the Merkel late-term and Scholz years, with the debt brake in effect until 2023).
germany_decline_2018_2025_regulatory_not_fiscalinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_security
partial — DEU below synthetic by -0.251 cumulative over 2018-2022 (sign correct), but magnitude or placebo p=0.36363636363636365 below pre-registered thresholds…
partial
Across a broad panel of countries 1960-2019, higher trade openness predicts faster long-run convergence of real GDP per capita toward the global frontier (the United States) than industrial-policy intensity does.
trade_openness_long_run_income_convergenceinferred
viafiscal.sectoral_subsidyregulatory.energy_supply_security
PARTIAL — coef=+6.729e-18, p=0.00881; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Lula third-term's Nova Indústria Brasil 2024 industrial-policy package, conditioned on export performance and technology-diffusion metrics, produces measurable sectoral capability gains (semiconductors, green hydrogen, health-industrial complex) by 2030 — replicating the East Asian export-discipline conditionality pattern rather than the earlier Latin American import-substitution-industrialisation pattern.
nova_industria_brasil_export_discipline_pattern_effectinferred
viafiscal.sectoral_subsidyregulatory.energy_supply_security
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING
run pending
Policy-driven nuclear phaseouts produce a three-order causal chain.
nuclear_phaseout_energy_cost_industry_exitinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_security
PARTIAL — mean_gap=+0.04357, |gap|/pre_sd=8.7, p_perm=0.25; claim direction ambiguous
partial
Biden's IRA/CHIPS industrial policy will show partial success on capacity-building metrics and mixed results on job creation, consistent with the conditional view that industrial policy works where targeting is technically competent and governance is strong.
industrial_policy_semiconductor_chips_act_effectivenessinferred
viafiscal.sectoral_subsidyregulatory.sectoral_licensing
inconclusive — Stacked: (4/4) spec-named semi-specific series unavailable on disk (oecd:STAN_INDUSTRY ISIC C26, bls:CES3133, ilostat:semiconductor employment, c…
run pending
Countries with aggressive green-transition regulatory stringency layered on top of gas-indexed wholesale electricity markets and premature phase-out of firm-dispatchable generation (Germany, UK, Belgium, Netherlands) have experienced materially higher industrial electricity prices 2015-2023 than comparable economies with more measured transition paths (France's nuclear retention, Nordic hydro, USA's shale-gas-backed grid).
green_transition_cost_trajectory_electricity_pricesinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_security
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'aggressive_green_transition_dummy' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.