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Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) provide unique ways of developing and scaling high-potential companies, by bringing capital to high-risk companies and deploying active ownership. In a new report commissioned by the Swedish Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, we find that PE boosts productivity by 22% of the companies they invest in.

Learn more about the economic impact of Private Equity and Venture Capital in Sweden here.

For further information, please contact Jonas Bjarke Jensen, Managing Economist.

Flash Glucose Monitors are medical devices that help people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar. The devices offer people with diabetes an alternative to the conventional finger pricking method.

Academic research suggests that using a flash glucose monitor can reduce the risk of harmful and unpleasant complications from diabetes, such as hypoglycaemia and late-stage complications, leading to lower use of healthcare services and improved labour market participation for the users of flash glucose monitors. Due to these positive effects, the societal net costs of offering flash glucose monitors to patients are significantly lower than the purchasing cost of the monitors.

Find the main conclusions of our study on flash glucose monitor use in Norway.

Climate and sustainability potentials, barriers to growth, and Danish strongholds

Biotechnological climate solutions, or bio solutions, are important enablers for the decarbonisation of processes in industries that are otherwise difficult to decarbonise.

Certain bio solutions can be used to increase the yield of agriculture, reduce land use, provide alternative sources of protein for food, lower demand for plastic and pesticides, prevent food waste, and improve biodiversity, food supply, and food security.

However, the deployment of these bio solutions is being held back by a wide range of barriers. The absence of CO2 pricing and an outdated regulatory system are inhibiting several mature technologies ready for large-scale deployment.

The Alliance for Bio Solutions under the Danish Chamber of Commerce has commissioned Copenhagen Economics to analyse how bio solutions can help industries and households in their decarbonisation. An important part is not only to assess the impact of bio solutions on greenhouse gas emissions or the substitution of materials, but also the cost of these bio solutions relative to their alternatives and the framework conditions required to secure the uptake of these solutions.

Concretely, we were asked to analyse:

1. The global potentials of bio solutions.

2. Barriers that bio solutions face and policy recommendations for improved framework conditions.

3. The future market opportunities for the Danish bio solutions industry.

Find the study The potentials of bio solutions.

Direct and indirect electrification from intermittent renewable energy sources are key pillars of the green transition. Yet, they pose challenges to the energy system and grid regulation schemes as we know them. Therefore, large-scale projects that produce and consume electricity even before entering the transmission and distribution grids hold a great opportunity for society to enable the renewable energy build-out that we need, without adding large capital costs on grid operators for grid build-out to transport and distribute energy.

We find, however, that existing grid tariffs are not fit for large, flexible consumers such as electrolysers, as they do not take into account the (limited) required additional grid capacity stemming from this type of consumers if allowed to be placed in co-location via direct lines between production and consumption of electricity.

We also find that all users could potentially gain from offering large, flexible consumers, like electrolysers, cost-reflective and capacity-based tariffs, which would even provide additional TSO revenue in the short to medium term. In the long term, capacity-based tariffs for all users would induce much more efficient use of the energy system and smoothen grid capacity demand during all hours of the day, which is exactly the outcome we want to limit peak demand - the true driver of grid costs.

Learn more about the topic here.

For further information, please contact Managing Economist, Signe Rølmer Vejgaard.

The Nordic region is an attractive option for strengthening Europe’s external digital connectivity through submarine cables across the Arctic region. Low temperatures and ample access to renewable energy sources allow data centres to be more energy effective and emit less CO2 in the Nordic region than in other geographical locations in Europe. Additionally, we estimate that an Arctic cable could boost GDP in the Nordic region by more than EUR 1 billion annually.

However, barriers are in the way for Arctic cables to succeed; Submarine cables in the Arctic have not been done previously and the cable construction thus entails risk, the demand for traffic through new cables is uncertain, and some of the gains from increased connectivity will not accrue directly to investors but to the wider society instead. To avoid potential market failures, governments can support the development of submarine cable projects indirectly through research and education networks acting as anchor tenants, which would also benefit research and education institutions.

Learn more about the societal benefits of an Arctic submarine cable here.

For further information, please contact Morten May Hansen, Senior Economist.