The ongoing debate about the future development of the Swedish power sector and how one should best create a reliable and robust system has many similarities with debates in the past. In fact, since the beginning of the 20th century, there has almost been a continuous discussion about three kinds of what we call “balancing problems”. One has concerned differing assessments of how much electricity will be needed in the future in different sectors of society, and how the expansion of the power sector should balance the future demand. A second has been about what sources of electricity supply should be developed, and how they should be balanced with each other to ensure a reliable supply. The third has dealt with what kind of actors should be involved in the development of the power sector, and how their influence should be balanced to achieve a robust whole. Moreover, these three balancing problems have often been more or less intertwined reflecting the complexity of the power system. In the chapter, we analyze a number of these “balancing debates” and the various policies and decisions they led to. At the end we come back to the present debate and suggest some lessons from the past.

Elavregleringen i Sverige gick i två steg. 1992 skedde en uppdelning av affärsverket Vattenfall i ett helägt statligt aktiebolag, Vattenfall AB, som tog över alla kraftverk, och ett affärsverk, Svenska Kraftnät, som tog över alla kraftledningar. Fyra år senare infördes en ny ellag, vars syfte var att öka konkurrensen på elmarknaden. Vad var bakgrunden till denna genomgripande förändring av elsektorn? Vilka var de främsta aktörerna, och vad ville de uppnå? Hur gick processen till? Och vad blev effekterna av avregleringen. 

Sverige är ett ledande it-land. Grunden till denna ställning lades redan under 1950-, 60- och 70-talen. Den tidens datorer var så stora och dyra att bara mycket resursstarka organisationer kunde skaffa dem: Försvarsmakten, storföretagen och statliga myndigheter. De var maktens maskiner.

Stordatorer användes bland annat för att leda stridsflygplan, effektivisera verkstadsproduktion och övervaka landets tågtrafik och kraftsystem. Men också för att hjälpa staten dra in skatter i ett alltmer komplext skattesystem och betala ut nya former av sociala bidrag. Skräddarsydda datorsystem utvecklades för de olika tillämpningarna i ett nära samarbete mellan dataspecialister och specialister på användningsområdena. Datorernas genomslag på allt fler områden väckte även kritik och debatter om integritet, sårbarhet och arbetslivets utarmning.

Bokens författare skildrar denna mångfacetterade historia utifrån ett unikt källmaterial och intervjuer med inblandade experter. Vi får bekanta oss med matematikmaskinen Besk, Aseas industrirobotar, försvarets stridsledningssystem och mycket annat som var beroende av avancerad datakraft. Boken ger insikter om det datoriserade samhället, dess styrkor och risker, som är  relevanta också idag.

In the late 1960s, Scandinavian scientists asserted that the long-rangeair pollution was causing serious acidification and that emissions all over Europewould have to be diminished. The prevailing view at the time was thatair pollution was a local phenomenon best handled by building high smokestacks,and the major polluting countries were opposed to spending money onprotecting areas far away in other countries. This chapter analyses how the discoveryof “acid rain” triggered the first international research projects to confirmlong-range air pollution and how, in a second phase, international negotiationsinvolving scientists, policymakers, and diplomats resulted in the Convention onLong-Range Transboundary Air Pollution in 1979. Later on, special protocolswere adopted, and the signing nations promised to decrease their emissions inaccordance with specific goals. Cold War politics played an interesting role inthe negotiations and led to an unexpected alliance between Nordic countriesand the Soviet Union.

It is important for students to have knowledge about the basic characteristicsof technological systems, because they differ in crucial respects comparedto single technological artefacts. Moreover, many technological systems have a farreachingimpact on society and the environment, while at the same time they aresocially shaped and controlled by human beings. In the literature such systemsare often called socio-technical systems. The aim of this chapter is to investigatethe key characteristics of technological systems in time and space, in order toinform teaching of technological systems. The specific characteristics of technologicalsystems include them being: socio-technical with both societal and technicalcomponents; developed by system builders and managed by professional organizations;with a spatial scope ranging from local/city-wide, regional, national to globalnetworks; dependent on control features including feedback loops as crucial mechanismsfor making the systems stable. These technological systems also evolve—and sometimes devolve—in distinct phases and in particular societal, economic andgeographical contexts, which may have repercussions when they are transferred.Furthermore, the systems are dependent on each other which over time and spaceleads to an entanglement of systems. Technological systems, finally, have a hugeimpact on the environment, which is why students will need to critically considerthe human dependence on systems. This chapter introduces a number of systemsconcepts that might also be fruitfully used as educational concepts in teaching abouttechnological systems. This way students can learn to generalize knowledge of technologicalsystems, so that they can take on, understand and critique different kindsof systems, even ones that have not been designed yet.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how competence in the humanities and social sciences has been introduced into the system culture of the Swedish nuclear waste system (SNWS) traditionally dominated by scientists and engineers. In the spring of 1980, fierce local protests were directed against drilling teams sent out to investigate the geology of potential locations for a repository of spent nuclear fuel. This demonstrated the political and ethical dimensions of the waste issue and the limitations of the technocratic approach that had hitherto dominated the system culture of the SNWS.

In order to counter this tendency, the government established an advisory board, Samrådsnämnden för kärnavfall (abbreviated KASAM), in 1985 with the task to widen the perspectives on the nuclear waste issue. KASAM engaged social scientists and humanists and started organizing annual workshops inviting engineers and scientists working with the waste issue to discuss its ethical and political dimensions. In the early 1990s, SKB, the Swedish implementer organization responsible for the management of nuclear waste, changed its strategy for finding suitable locations for a repository of spent nuclear fuel. Approval from the local population became a key condition. In the early 2000s, only two municipalities remained, both of them already housing nuclear power plants. After careful investigations and many deliberations, one of them was eventually chosen.

The combination of KASAM’s activities to broaden the discussion and the local protests in many communities initiated a gradual change of the system culture within the SNWS. The initial technocratic approach was broadened to encompass ethical, social, and political aspects, and the main organizations now acknowledge that not only technical and scientific skills but also competence from social science and the humanities were of essence.

This article is about the rapid transition to gasifiers in Swedenduring World War Two, which made it possible to fuel cars withdomestic wood instead of petrol, the imports of which seizedduring the war. The transition had been prepared in the interwarperiod and was executed very effectively in the beginningof the war. However, when the war was over and petrolbecame available again most gasifiers were quickly dismantled.In the concluding discussion, the concepts of head wind andtail wind transitions are introduced to analyze why gasifierswere introduced so rapidly in the beginning of the war, andwhy they were dismantled just as quickly after the war. It isargued, that the gasifiers were a clear example of a head windtransition, and the gasifier transition is briefly contrasted withtwo other energy transitions in Sweden that were tail windtransitions: the development of hydropower and of nuclearpower.