Wind

Norway should use oil & gas levy to finance offshore wind growth: Equinor CEO

Anders Opedal and oil major's head for Norwegian Continental Shelf stress floating wind should help decarbonise fossil exploration

Equinor CEO Anders Opedal.
Equinor CEO Anders Opedal.Photo: Equinor
European Editor, Recharge
A CO2 levy on Norway's oil and gas industry should be used to finance the development of offshore wind, said Equinor CEO Anders Opedal and Kjetil Hove, head of the Norwegian Continental shelf at the oil major.
As wind at sea can contribute to electrifying oil and gas exploration activities, “the CO2 tax from the oil and gas industry can thus be used to cut emissions in Norway,” they argued in an opinion piece in Recharge’s Norwegian sister publication Dagens Naeringsliv.

The levy currently goes directly to the country’s oil fund and not to the government’s budget.

“It is important to clarify that we are not asking for more money for the oil and gas industry, but that the state's income from the CO2 tax can be better utilised to develop badly needed power for everyone.
“Then the CO2 tax will be able to have a double effect. First, as an incentive to cut emissions, then as a means of building out more power.”

Equinor last year officially opened its 88MW Hywind Tampen floating wind farm – the world’s largest as well as the first offshore wind array to power oil and gas fields. The company has said it sees Hywind Tampen as an example to be followed to electrify greater parts of oil and gas exploration in Norway and elsewhere.

But Equinor earlier last year "indefinitely" delayed a much bigger floating project, the 1GW Trollvind array that was supposed to decarbonise a large swathe of Norwegian oil and gas production and originally should have been up and running as early as 2027.

Trine Borum Bojsen, senior vice president for renewables in Europe, later told Recharge that the decision to pause Trollvind had to do with reasons of technology, turbine availability, but also a “general kind of cost increase pressure”.

Despite the mothballing of Trollvind and Equinor not being successful in Norway’s first 1.5GW offshore wind auction (which was won by the Ventyr consortium), Opedal and Hove in their article stressed that Equinor is still betting on offshore wind, also as they are worried that it is increasingly challenging to develop large volumes of hydropower or onshore wind.

“That is why we point to the large, planned allocation rounds for floating offshore wind,” they said.

(Copyright)

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Published 28 May 2024, 07:35Updated 28 May 2024, 07:35
EuropeNorwayEquinorAnders OpedalFinance