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Comment by proser | Hacker News Reader

European utilities are often public utilities that are nationalized in some way, not strictly corporate businesses.

Not sure what you're talking about, practically every major EU energy org is a corporation (traded on an exchange or even an Ltd-like private company), only sometimes there's a bit of it owned by a state... Can you give some examples of major energy organizations that are wholly-owned by a state (or at least majority-owned) or actual organizational units of a state?

Vattenfall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vattenfall

Fortum, 50.x% owned by the finish state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortum

Equinor, 67% Norwegian government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinor

Ørsted, 50.x%. Danish state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98rsted_(company)

EDF, 87% French state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9_de_Franc...

Good examples. But what about the rest of the continent? And while these companies are the largest on their home markets, they're not the only ones there, are they? And they operate on foreign markets where they are a corporation like any other. For this we should consider only the home-based operation where they can have influence on the state policy, IMHO.

And what about EU rules against unfair competition? They basically force these companies to behave like any other market participant and forbid the state from giving them much/any help. This had real consequences in Poland and Czechia where the states wanted to help nuclear projects (in case of Czechia it was CEZ - the partially state-owned energy company) but the EU stopped it.

For good. Remember Texas electricity costs soaring?

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