Neuvottelija.com

Episode 205 · 2023-08-05 · 45:12 · Original in Finnish

Power grids and financing in good shape | Jyrki Tammivuori | Negotiator 205

Originally published as “Carunan sähköverkot | Jyrki Tammivuori | Neuvottelija 205”

Caruna's chief executive Jyrki Tammivuori joins Sami Miettinen. Two former counterparties — a treasurer and the banker who covered him — work through first the evolution of financing documentation and then the power grid itself: weather-proofing requirements, two-way electricity, the bottlenecks in the network, and the WACC framework in the Energy Authority's regulatory model. Also 2.5 billion euros of debt at a BBB rating, electricity consumption expected to grow by half, and negative prices with rising volatility. The guest runs a regulated monopoly and comments on his own regulatory model.

Guest: Jyrki Tammivuori · Host: Sami Miettinen

Core theses

  1. Distribution is extraordinarily capital-intensive, so the financing structure is not a detail beside the engineering — it is the same subject.
  2. The regulatory WACC framework decides what gets built, which makes a monopoly's view of its own model worth hearing and worth marking.
  3. Two-way flow and rooftop solar change what a distribution network is for, not just how much it carries.
  4. The guest leads a regulated monopoly discussing its own regulation, with no consumer or regulator present.

Watch and listen

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Key moments

  1. 00:00 — Jyrki Tammivuori, and an old banking relationship
  2. 00:55 — Stora Enso's revolver without covenants
  3. 02:24 — What covenants are, and why they suit Caruna
  4. 03:04 — Competing for capital, and how NATO membership helps
  5. 04:11 — Green bonds and the EU taxonomy
  6. 06:06 — One-month Euribor: good advice disguised as a joke
  7. 08:17 — A floating rate as a natural buffer
  8. 09:24 — Caruna's change of ownership and the interest controversy
  9. 10:31 — Electricity distribution is extremely capital-intensive
  10. 11:07 — 2.5 billion in debt and a BBB rating
  11. 12:13 — The storm controversy and a weather-proof grid
  12. 14:25 — How it all went this well
  13. 15:09 — A ten-year investment cycle
  14. 16:55 — Finland's distribution is among the cheapest in Europe
  15. 17:54 — A two-way grid, and panels on roofs
  16. 19:06 — Bottlenecks in the network, and wind power in Ostrobothnia
  17. 19:57 — One price area, flexibility and cross-border transfers
  18. 21:17 — Electricity consumption grows by 50 per cent
  19. 23:00 — Electric cars, night rates and smart consumption
  20. 24:24 — Negative prices and growing volatility
  21. 26:36 — The regulatory model and the WACC framework
  22. 28:00 — Supervisory decisions for the next eight years
  23. 30:39 — Owners: pension money from Finland, Sweden and Canada
  24. 32:20 — A listing is unlikely
  25. 34:11 — Caruna: half a billion in revenue, 1.5 million users
  26. 35:07 — Fingrid as the motorway, distribution as the roads
  27. 37:17 — Passing through transmission charges
  28. 39:00 — The three thirds of an electricity bill
  29. 41:34 — Who spot pricing suits
  30. 42:32 — A message to the government
  31. 43:38 — Why network companies do not compete for customers
  32. 44:53 — Closing words

Summary

Caruna’s chief executive Jyrki Tammivuori joins Sami Miettinen. Two former counterparties — a treasurer and the banker who covered him — work through first the evolution of financing documentation and then the power grid itself: weather-proofing requirements, two-way electricity, the bottlenecks in the network, and the WACC framework in the Energy Authority’s regulatory model. Also 2.5 billion euros of debt at a BBB rating, electricity consumption expected to grow by half, and negative prices with rising volatility. The guest runs a regulated monopoly and comments on his own regulatory model.

Why the financing half belongs with the grid half

Electricity distribution is extraordinarily capital-intensive — 2.5 billion euros of debt at a BBB rating, on a ten-year investment cycle. The documentation, the covenants and the choice between fixed and floating are therefore not a separate subject from the poles and cables; they decide what can be built and when.

The regulatory question the episode does not press

The WACC framework in the Energy Authority’s model sets the allowed return and therefore the investment. Hearing a monopoly’s chief executive explain how it works is valuable; it is also an interested account, and no regulator or consumer voice is present to test it.

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Carunan sähköverkot | Jyrki Tammivuori | Neuvottelija 205. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.

In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.

Go deeper

People and topics

Guests: Jyrki Tammivuori

Topics: Finnish Economy & Policy Investing & Markets

AI and agent resources

Source and content status

Provenance: Finnish source: Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the publisher's own chapter marks, translated one for one; their spacing is irregular and matches the recording. No transcript is published here — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The guest is the chief executive of a regulated distribution monopoly commenting on his own regulatory model, and the host is a former banking counterparty of his; neither a regulator nor a consumer representative is present, which the long-form write-up in the Neuvottelija AI editions states.. English subtitles: not available on this page; this is an episode summary, not a curated transcript. QA coverage 0% (metadata only). Original episode: neuvottelija.fi. Imported 2026-09-20 · last reviewed 2026-09-20. Passages the source audio left genuinely ambiguous are marked [unclear] rather than guessed.