Czechia’s transition
To Czechia, II.
We are moving beyond Germany, steps towards a more international perspective of the energy industry and its markets in this newsletter. I'm between Nanjing and Yangzhou finishing this post about Czechia.
Why Czechia?
We are each drawn in and led by our own associations and interests. When I think about the beginnings of modern Europe, I am drawn to the 1618 Pražské defenestrace (Prager Fenstersturz, Defenestration of Prague), which led to the thirty-years war.
Sie wollten ihren alten König nicht mehr, der in Personalunion auch der Kaiser war; ihr neuer Herrscher sollte Protestant sein. Um ihren Entschluss zu besiegeln, hatten sie die kaiserlichen Statthalter aus dem Fenster des Prager Schlosses geworfen. Nur waren die in einen Haufen Scheiße gefallen und hatten überlebt.
They no longer wanted their old king who, in personal union, was also the Kaiser; their new ruler should be a Protestant. To seal their decision, they had thrown the imperial governors out the window of Prague Castle. Only they had fallen into a pile of shit and had survived.
Excerpt From Tyll, Daniel Kehlmann (original, and the translation by Ross Benjamin)
Energy is a theme around which to develop new associations and new knowledge.
Czechia’s energy industry is in a period of complex change. Major strengths: nuclear expertise, a large incumbent utility, strong cross-border links, strong domestic engineering capacity, a robust power system that imports and exports electricity, synchronised with its European neighbours. But the old model is narrowing. In particular, coal is declining faster than the replacement system is being built.
The core Czech energy challenge seems to be about the timing of the transition away from coal and about the degree of energy integration with its neighbours.
Timing and transitions
In a 2018 commentary, Jiří Pehe opens with the line: “Češi jsou hluboce rozpolcený národ” (“Czechs are a deeply divided nation.”) He links the memory of 1618 and the Thirty Years’ War to a recurring Czech tension between standing apart and taking a more pan-European orientation.
In the energy context, is sovereignty best protected by self-reliance, or by building resilience through wider European structures?
