STAVANGER, Norway (Reuters) – Climate substitution has a key factor for the Norwegian electorate in upcoming parliamentary elections that polls show could usher in more lawmakers reducing oil and fuel drilling.
The more successful pro-environment parties are in the September 12-13 elections, the more restrictions they will impose on oil companies, for example, restricting where they can look for new fields.
Western Europe’s largest oil maker is facing pressure from environmental teams to halt all new oil and fuel projects to help climate change.
Norway emitted about 13. 3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020 from fossil fuel production, but emissions from its oil and fuel used were 30 times higher than more than 400 million tons, said Robbie Andrew, principal investigator of Oslo Climate Think. -CICERO tank.
The opposition Labour Party and its allies, adding the Socialist left, are expected to largely update conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s ruling coalition, according to polls. Labor supports the continuation of oil exploration while the socialist left opposes it.
Since the release of a United Nations report https://www. reuters. com/business/environment/un-sounds-clarion-call-over-irreversible-weather-impacts-through-humans-2021-08-09 on August 20 warn that global warming dangerously on the verge of an out-of-control spiral, parties that prioritize climate change, such as the Green Party and the Socialist Left, saw their popularity rise in the polls. The Greens saw their party’s club increase by 25%.
However, it will be a major challenge to prevent, like the Greens, a sector that accounts for 42% of national exports and employs some 160,000 people.
On Tuesday, Solberg’s coalition government, which includes pro-oil conservatives and green-minded liberals and Christian Democrats, proposed cutting reimbursements on exploration charges as a result of a review of the country’s oil tax system.
ENERGY TRANSITION
Nowhere are climate replacement policies as important as in Stavanger, a windswept West Coast city in the middle of the fjords that is home to Equinor and other oil companies.
Here it is not as usual.
“There’s been a lot of acceptance that we want to change, that we want to start making plans for life after oil,” said Svein Kvernstuen, 49, Beyonder’s chief executive. The company manufactures fast-charging battery cells produced with renewable force and sawdust that can be used to force heavy machinery or to stabilize power grids.
Like his father, Kvernstuen in the past worked on offshore platforms, then at an oil company, before founding Beyonder in 2016.
It needs any new government to take care of education to make sure it can employ professional staff for the pilot plant it is building for 700 million kroner ($79 million), with plans to start large-scale mobile battery production in 2024.
Getting staff with the right skills was a big challenge, he said, and the company had to hire other people from abroad, basically in Asia.
NorSea, a homeport operator of offshore oil and fuel platforms, will expand the world’s largest site to build foundations for floating offshore wind turbines. Norway has opened offshore spaces for wind farms and plans to launch the first tenders next year.
Chief Executive John Stangeland needs bureaucratic procedures, and says it may take up to a decade for existing regulations to see the first floating wind turbines in operation on Norway’s continental shelf.
“My is that we are moving too slowly,” the 57-year-old said.
THE END OF THE OIL AGE?
The Green Party, which must end oil exploration and production by 2035, hopes to achieve its most productive election result yet, thanks to young, urban voters, reflecting an end seen in other parts of Europe, such as Germany.
“We think we will have 8 to ten representatives in Parliament, to one at the moment,” said Ulrikke Torgersen, 24, the green candidate in Rogaland, the Stavanger region. The Norwegian parliament has 169 seats.
The two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, must use the wisdom of industry to create green jobs and negotiate the transition of power it will leave behind.
Labour has governed any alliance with the Greens, who say there will only be one government that will end oil exploration and production without delay until 2035. This position can be tested after the election if Labour cannot form a majority without the Greens.
“The most we have to do for other people who paint in the oil and fuel industry is to push for the creation of renewable energy industries, so they have jobs,” said Hadia Tajik, deputy leader of the Labour Party and the Rogaland MP. candidate.
The workforce subsidized the Conservative government’s energy white paper presented in June, which bet on hydrogen and offshore wind for Norway’s energy transition while letting oil and fuel corporations continue extraction until 2050 and beyond.
“We, the oil and fuel industry, must know that there will be no unexpected political adjustments with Labour and that adjustments will be discussed with the sector itself,” Tajik said.
This is welcomed by oil workers, who worry that the Greens will pressure the new government to adopt policies that would limit oil activities but do little for global production and gain advantages from other oil manufacturers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia.
“Our biggest fear is that the Greens may see their fantasies come true,” said Kai Morten Anda, deputy director of Safe, one of the unions representing oil workers.
Meanwhile, the industry continues to pump oil, and oil corporations are making plans to approve about fifty new projects in 2021 and 2022, Norway’s oil regulator said, amounting to about $43 billion in investment.
This contrasts with what the other Nordic states are doing. Denmark, for example, is forging a foreign alliance of countries willing to set a date for the phase-out of oil production.
“Oil is a company that is disappearing. In recent years, he has had some difficult ups and downs, many other people have been fired. I’m not attracted to it,” said Kim Erling Stangeland (no connection to John Stangeland), 24, who studied economics and now works part-time as a saleswoman.
($1 = 8. 8156 Norwegian kroner)
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing via Gwladys Fouché, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Lisa Shumaker)
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