Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy Liv Monica Stubholt visited CSIS to discuss Norway's unique and seemingly paradoxical position as a major global producer of fossil fuels, but also as a nation at the forefront of environmental policy to mitigate climate change. She spoke about some of Norway's strengths, engineering/technical capabilities and availability of capital from fossil fuel revenues, and how those tools will be employed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Deputy Minister Stubholt described two major Norwegian commitments toward this end: leadership of development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and significant contributions of money to combat global deforestation. Norway has outlined a two-pronged approach on CCS, which it sees as an essential "bridging technology" that can abate emissions until we have developed a fully renewable global energy system. Norway will first develop two commercial scale power plants with CCS capabilities with the intention of using those plants as laboratories for technology development and training. One facility will demonstrate CCS retrofit technology, and the other will demonstrate new build gas-fired CCS technology. In the second part of Norway's CCS strategy, they hope to lower the cost of CCS technologies by attracting commerical partners and accelerate global deployment.
Deputy Minister Stubholt closed by empasizing the importance of technology, but that technology optimism should not be the only way we think about solving the immense challenges posed by climate change.
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