World outlook


hydrocarbons in cars and aircraft. Nor do the issues with projects like Hywind Tampen end there. They may be sustainable in theory, but the wind


doesn’t always blow, and oil derricks will therefore always need alternative power sources to carry on functioning. Naturally that increases costs ≠ hardly helped, says Bahzad Ayoub, another Westwood expert, by economies of scale. Because its only function is to fuel the Snorre and Gullfaks fields, Hywind Tampen has a total installed capacity of around 88MW. By way of comparison, Ayoub points out, in January 2022 the average capacity of wind farms awarded leases in the ScotWind leasing round was over 1.7GW.


There are potential workarounds here. One answer,


Ayoub suggests, could be to build big immediately and send any excess power that is not needed by oil and gas installations to the onshore electricity grid. But powering towns and cities via offshore turbines is always expensive, particularly when relying on pricey floating platforms. It’s surely no coincidence that in May this year Equinor indefinitely postponed its Trollvind offshore wind initiative, citing rising costs as one factor. Like Hywind Tampen, Trollvind was supposed to provide clean power to nearby oil and gas installations – and like Hywind, the Trollvind turbines were also meant to float on platforms.


Will oil be back? Amid all this disorder, one solution could plausibly be to abandon offshore turbines together and instead drastically ramp up onshore wind production. When you consider Norway’s mountainous landscape, as well as the fact that population density is just 15 people per square kilometre – England has 434 – this option seems even more appealing, no doubt reflected by schemes like the one near Hoyanger. Yet here, too, weighing environmentalism with broader societal concerns isn’t straightforward. Though hardly a natural opponent of wind farms, Greta Thunberg has fiercely protested against a pair of wind farms in western Norway, arguing they violated the rights of the native Sami people, in particular harming their reindeer herding culture.


The Supreme Court in Oslo ruled against the turbines in October 2021, making the argument as much legal as societal. Even so, it speaks once more to the immense difficulties this country, alongside many others, face when balancing the demands of the planet with those of the people who live there. “It’s fair to say that Norway has had a strong financial interest in keeping the oil and gas activity up and running,” concedes Galaaen – even as he acknowledges that “now we need to speed up the transition” towards renewables. But what that balance is and how exactly Norway reaches it remains decidedly unclear. ●


1.7GW


The average capacity of wind farms awarded leases in the ScotWind leasing round in January 2022.


Marine Scotland


September 2024


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