When developing on the Norwegian continental shelf, investors receive a tax deduction of NOK 78 for every NOK 100 invested. When extraction starts, the Norwegian state gets NOK 78 for every NOK 100 it earns. Now that we are phasing out oil and gas, it is impossible to maintain our common and unique social democratic welfare model. Surprisingly, none of us learned from the success story of our oil adventure.
If we now want to increase investment in renewables, we have the answer to how to attract capital interest. Imposing the same kind of taxes we apply to oil and gas. Not only will we then receive the required support, but we will also secure income for the state and be able to maintain our prosperity more easily. With the green change we are witnessing today, we have no way of securing sufficient income for a mutual fund.
We have three challenges:
Challenge #1: It is important to understand what is an energy source and what is an energy carrier. Hydropower, wind, sun, waves, biomass, and geothermal are all examples of renewable energy sources. Hydrogen, ammonia, batteries, and methanol are not sources of energy, but are examples of energy carriers. This means that energy must be used to create or fill these carriers with energy. Today, we don’t have enough renewable energy production to be able to make energy storage CO2-free. The best we have is gas and it is currently considered green but not renewable.
Challenge No. 2: We do not have the infrastructure, i.e. power cables, that connect the whole of Norway together for free distribution of electricity. Here we can learn from the oil and gas industry. They soon discovered that it was more efficient to lay pipelines that would transport oil and gas to market. OOOppps, yes, we learned, connected to the ACER with good big cables. But why on earth did we do this before we got our house (country) in order? There is no point in developing green energy sources as long as everything is sold outside the country, or will be used in the manufacture of energy carriers. This is happening while essential businesses are forced to close due to rising energy prices. Rest assured, the management in Moro is closely monitoring the development of electricity prices, and unfortunately it is not possible to get a store at current electricity prices. Electricity prices will not decrease until we have the infrastructure so that everyone in Norway can obtain the same amount of electricity at the same price, and until then we will not see low electricity prices again.
Challenge No. 3: As if we were not satisfied with the previous two challenges, the shelf will be electrified. It is great that we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions individually. But it would require 10% of the total energy we have today in Norway. We have no opportunity to increase renewable energy production to cover the 10% rate in light of the challenges we are already facing. Offshore wind could be our next big adventure, and that’s where we can cover much of the renewable energy we need, provided we can solve Challenge No. 2 – laying cables and changing taxes.
As for Santa Claus, we can hope that he will visit everyone who was kind last year. We may have shopped 3 percent less during our Black Week, and that could come in handy when November’s electric bill comes around.
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