Hacker News Reader

Comment by librasteve | Hacker News Reader

I see that Norway is big on renewables - great that all that Oil & Gas revenue can be used to build hydro & wind to salve their conscience.

View on HN

It's not (mostly) to salve their consciences; it's fundamental to their avoidance of the Resource Curse/"Dutch Disease". Norway, unlike just about everywhere else "blessed" (and I use those scare-quotes intentionally) with oil and gas, anticipated the value of not getting high on one's own supply: they have some of the most heavily taxed vehicle fuel in Europe, as well as strict limits on how much oil/gas tax revenue can be spent each year with the rest going into an enormous investment fund.

well yeah. my point is that when you have a small population and massive reserves then you can print money - but rather like we in the UK gloat that we do not burn coal any more (we just buy stuff from China and they do that on our behalf with Aussie coal), its not really a good thing to ship oil & gas abroad where dirtier countries can burn it ... there is a massive argument in the UK right now about whether to reopen the North Sea in the wake of Trumps Iranian "victory" ... but I guess we (all) need to back the case for leaving fossil fuels in the ground

the alternative is the Jeremy Clarkson philisophy that mankind is so greedy that we will burn evey gramme of fossil fuel on planet earth and nothing can stop that (so I may as well burn some in a Ferrari F48)

Funny story is that a very important reason why Norway ended up with the oil policies it did is a Iraq-born immigrant named Farouk Al-Kasim.

He was a geologist with a Norwegian wife, moving to Norwegy since their kid had cerebral palsy. In a testament to how desperate Norway was for competence in petroleum, he could pretty much just walk in to the ministry of industry and get a job, and ended up writing the nation’s blueprint for how it would organise its fledgling oil industry. Without him things could have gone very very different, and he has been awarded Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav Knight 1st Class for his importance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk_Al-Kasim

https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com...

The first hydro power plant in Norway was set up in 1882, and last century it grew very quickly and was fundamental to alumin[i]um and fertiliser production in Norway. Domestic energy use has been close to a 100% hydro electric for almost just as long (and a lot of industry in addition to the above, e.g. iron smelting). Oil and gas are latecomers relative to this and the revenue from that is not behind this.

Better than having oil and gas revenue and not using it to build hydro and wind. Like some other countries we can all name.

Interesting looking at the data, that Norway generates 4x the electricity of NZ and they are roughly the same size and population I assume it exports most.

I found this info... https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-powers-worlds-lon...

UK generation is 30GW right now, so this is ~ 5%

By enabling the trade of renewable energy between the two countries, North Sea Link will help reduce the burning of fossil fuels in the UK and avoid 23 million tonnes of carbon emissions by 2030.

The 450-mile cable, which connects Blyth in Northumberland with the Norwegian village of Kvilldal, near Stavanger, will start with a maximum capacity of 700 megawatts (MW) and gradually increase to the link’s full capacity of 1400MW over a three-month period. The gradual increase in capacity follows the Norwegian system operator’s standard approach for integrating new interconnectors. Once at full capacity, NSL will provide enough clean electricity to power 1.4 million homes.

North Sea Link will be the fifth interconnector for National Grid, which also operates links to Belgium, France and the Netherlands. By 2030, 90% of electricity imported via National Grid’s interconnectors will be from zero carbon sources saving 100 million tonnes of carbon – equivalent to taking two million cars off the road.

NSL has taken six years to build. Laying of the undersea cables began in 2018 and more than four million working hours have been spent on the project, including 5,880 working days at sea.

Norwegian power generation is sourced from hydropower plants connected to large reservoirs, which can respond faster to fluctuations in demand compared to other major generation technologies. However, as the water level in reservoirs is subject to weather conditions, production varies throughout seasons and years.

When wind generation is high and electricity demand low in Britain, NSL will enable renewable power to be exported from the UK, conserving water in Norway’s reservoirs. When demand is high in Britain and there is low wind generation, hydro power can be imported from Norway, helping to ensure secure, affordable and sustainable electricity supplies for UK consumers.

A lot of the electricity is gobbled up by a few aluminum plants, but in addition to that Norway is a very electrified country. We don't use gas at the consumer level at all (except for grilling 2 months of the year, lol) and are rapidly moving transportation to electricity.

In a normal year we are a net exporter of electricity, but it's only around 10% that is exported.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com