Enabling the green transition in Norway

How can Norway achieve its ambitious climate and energy policy targets while also making sure the policies have sufficient societal support? That is the overarching question we are address in ENABLE. During the past 12 months we have worked on some more specific questions related to this: Norway and the EU will jointly achieve their 2030 climate target. There has been substantial policy development within the EU during the past year, developments that we are monitoring closely. We have published to articles and one book chapter, likely to be published late this year. The first paper studies the development of the EU climate and energy policy up to the European Green Deal and the "fit for 55" package. The main point is that policy packages do not only serve different functions to promote the green shift, they also affect what is politically feasible as the actors have different interests. The second paper studies the development of policy instruments to increase the demand for climate friendly technologies or to promote the development of new technologies, i.e. research and innovation policy. The main conclusion is that the EU is struggling to coordinate these two dimensions. The book chapter addresses whether the European Green Deal has the potential to improve coordinate between these two dimensions. The main conclusion is this is developing in the right direction, the EU's multiple research and innovation programs appear to be becoming better coordinated at both the EU and member state level. For the topic of offshore wind power our starting point is the opposition to land based wind power and asking whether we solve the problem by moving it offshore. Based on a survey of 1612 Norwegians we find that people prefer offshore wind (Sørlige Nordsjø II) over coastal wind power (Utsira Nord) and land based wind power (Fosen). The results show that people focus on who owns the project and what the power is used for. Respondents express a greater willingness to export power from offshore wind than from coastal and land based wind. We also ask questions about future challenges connected with offshore wind. In an cases study on offshore wind power at Utsira Nord we find a concern that the development will not yield local or national value added, that stakeholders feel that their views are not heard, that there is a negative impact on the local community and maritime industry that was not anticipated, and that there is a lack of a holistic set of rules for offshore wind power development. Within the topic of sustainable mobility we are following the piloting of autonomous vehicles in Ski by Ruter, and we have conducted a survey on sharing and mobility among members of OBOS and users of the app "Nabohjelp". In Ski we are exploring the views and opinions of (potential) passengers and other stakeholders on autonomous public transport through in-depth interviews. We addressed the same topic via the survey, which showed a relatively equal split into groups that are positive towards or negative towards using autonomous public transport. The young were substantially more positive than older people. Solutions to increase the flexibility of the energy system are expected to become more valuable with higher shares of variable renewable energy. A recent study analyzes the economic benefits of key flexibility options in the North European energy system under six increasingly ambitious climate targets towards 2030. The value of, and competition between, flexibility options is investigated by comparing total system costs and profits. The study results show the increasing value of all flexibility measures with increasingly ambitious climate targets. Demand side management has a relatively large impact on the system costs when climate targets are low, while sector coupling with the district heat sector and more interconnectors between regions and countries have an increasing impact with more ambitious climate targets. Biomass is essential for achieving deep decarbonization. ENABLE has so far resulted in six master thesis and numerous meetings with and presentations for our partners and other stakeholders. The project manager presented key topics from the project at the Research Council?s Energy research conference, attended by the Minister for Petroleum and Energy.

Norway has ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time provide a secure supply of energy and meet other societal goals. Norway’s first contribution to the Paris Agreement is to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 (vis-à-vis 1990). Achieving this - and later - target will require a massive green transition of the energy and transport sectors. However, implementation of technologies and policies to cut emissions has over the last few years been characterized by repeated conflicts between advocates of rapid upscaling and individuals and organisations that are concerned with possible side-effects. Despite strong political intentions to promote a transition to renewable energy and significant industrial commitments, the transition has often met strong opposition. For new energy and transport technologies to contribute effectively to the green transition in Norway, there is a need for sufficient acceptance for them and to manage the resistance that they may create. This requires deep insights into the premises for social acceptance on multiple societal levels in order to design appropriate policy packages that can simultaneously address multiple objectives. ENABLE asks the question whether and how different policy packages or mixes of technologies and measures can contribute to build social acceptance for the green transition in Norway? Through in-depth studies and active user involvement, the project will promote opportunities for efficient upscaling of technologies in the transport and energy sectors. We will address these issues from the user, local community, national, EU and system levels with application to three technology areas: Wind power, sustainable transport, and flexibility and grid.