World outlook F
or better or worse, the world’s great oil producers are besieged by cliché. Cast your mind to a town like Houston, Texas, and you’ll soon conjure images of leather boots and Stetsons. Imagine the Middle East and oil derricks mingle with crisp white thobes and towers gleaming in the sun. But as you continue down the list of petroleum superpowers, past OPEC stalwarts like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, you may spot a surprising name. Coming in as the 14th largest oil producer on Earth, just between Mexico and Qatar, is Norway. It’s hardly a nation of Stetsons, but oil and gas derricks off the North Sea provided the Norwegian exchequer with $140bn in 2022, representing roughly a quarter of the nation’s GDP.
If anything, this bounty is even more striking when you consider what Norway is known for internationally: being a quiet, modest nation, and one keenly supportive of environmental activism. Nor are stereotypes really necessary here. In 2016, for instance, Oslo unveiled plans to go completely carbon-neutral by 2030, two decades earlier than originally scheduled. That’s shadowed in practice too: 99% of Norway’s domestic electricity needs are met by sustainable hydroelectric power, making use of the fjords and rivers so famed across Scandinavia. But with all those oil and gas refineries remaining fundamental to the Norwegian economy – and funding a generous welfare state – how to weigh the country’s ambitious green targets with its geological endowment? One potential answer can be glimpsed in the chilly waters 85 miles off Norway’s coastline.
Here, at a site called Hywind Tampen, the Equinor energy giant has installed 11 floating turbines, which supply two nearby oil and gas installations with roughly 35% their energy needs. Not that Norway can square the circle of its energy portfolio quite so easily. From the continued climate impact of oil and gas, to challenges around cost, the country still has plenty to do to consider.
Norse ideas
Perhaps surprisingly for a country regularly battered by chilly North Sea winds, Norway has traditionally remained aloof to the potential of wind energy. In large part, suggests Stuart Leitch, that’s simply down to the range of decent alternatives. “The largest share of electricity produced in Norway comes from hydropower, with over 90% of the [nation’s] electricity produced by hydropower for the past 20 years,” explains Leitch, the new energies research manager at Westwood Global Energy Group. “With the hydropower infrastructure in place, Norway has been an exporter of its produced oil since 1972, shortly after first production from the Ekofisk field in June 1971.”
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com That last point is important. Though Norwegians
haven’t needed to power their houses or factories with oil and gas, these planet-harming industries have grown to dominate the country’s economy. “It’s for my pension, I’m told,” jokes Øistein Schmidt Galaaen, the production and sustainability director at Renewable Norway, an Oslo non-profit.
Despite Norway’s ambitious 2030 net-zero targets, oil and gas profits still contribute a quarter of the country’s GDP.
“With the increasing demand for decarbonisation of industries across Norway, supply from the national grid is becoming constrained and therefore the offshore sector has looked to alternative energy sources for provision of power, such as wind.”
Yvonne Telford, Westwood Global Energy Group
Over recent times, however, Norway’s comfortable energy mix has come in for criticism. In August 2023, after the government approved 19 new oil and gas projects worth $18bn altogether, a representative from Young Friends of the Earth Norway argued the country was “heading in the wrong direction”. From a purely environmental perspective, it’s hard to disagree, especially when you recall that Norwegian politicians of all stripes have awarded 700 oil and gas exploration licences over the past decade. With that in mind – and, of course, with the rising understanding that drastic carbon emission cuts are urgently needed – it’s no wonder that an increasing number of insiders are considering how the wind sector could help. “With the increasing demand for decarbonisation of industries across Norway,” explains Westwood’s research director, Yvonne Telford, “supply from the national grid is becoming constrained and therefore
99%
The percentage of Norway’s
domestic electricity needs that are met by sustainable hydroelectric power. International Energy Agency
88MW
The total installed capacity of the Hywind Tampen floating wind farm.
Equinor 11
Nightman1965/
Shutterstock.com
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