Black gold and green dilemmas: Climate politics and mitigation policies in oil producing countries

The challenges of climate change for fossil fuel producing countries have received sporadic attention and the time is overdue to take a closer look at the paradoxes facing fossil fuel producing countries.Our main hypothesis is that narratives constructed by fossil fuel producing countries seriously undermine domestic climate actions in the very same countries. This is a thematically challenging and controversial hypothesis at least in a Norwegian context, where Norway have adopted ambitious climate policy targets. These targets, however, are neither believed to be possible to attain, nor are they seen as realistic. We therefore want to identify and compare the key narratives which places fossil fuels (oil and gas in particular) as not necessarily climate friendly, but at least makes it justifiable to continue a fossil fuel production path within a carbon constrained future in Norway, Canada and Scotland. Further, the effect on domestic mitigation policies from these narratives will be analyzed vertically and in two sectors of society: 1) vertically in terms of impacts on regional and local climate policies, 2) in the building and construction sector, and 3) in the renewable energy sector. The country specific analyses will be compared in order to explore the opportunities for transforming these narratives into mitigation policy actions where realistic goals, narratives and policy correspond. This project is currently thought of as organized in three different but crucially related work packages. Work pa ckages are based on a comparative design. Partners from SINTEF Energy, Carleton university (Canada), Robert Gordon University (RGU in Aberdeen) and IRIS / University of Stavanger will participate in the pre-project, but also the full-fledged research pro ject.