Director of Nordic Energy Research Anne Cathrine Gjærde discusses the need for common Nordic solutions to our energy challenges and what Nordic Energy Research is planning is terms of calls in 2010 and beyond.
This year we will launch two major calls. Our main call in connection with our next 4-year strategy period from 2011 to 2014, as well as an important call from the Energy & Transport programme. Our main 4-yearly call will focus on Sustainable Energy Solutions. This overarching topic will be divided into three sub-topics: Renewables, Markets & Grids, and Transport. Further details about this call will be available in the next edition of this quarterly newsletter. More information about the Energy & Transport call is provided on page six of this newsletter.
Nordic Energy Research has been supporting Nordic cooperation in sustainable energy solutions for 25 years this year. With our funding, international teams of researchers have worked together to produce great results, matching complementary skills, reducing duplication and broadening the knowledge base. The challenges we face don’t stop at the border, why should our efforts to meet them?
But why Nordic cooperation as opposed to other bilateral or multilateral groups? We have five countries, similar in many aspects, such as governance & political stance, language & culture, energy regulation, policy and priorities, but complementary in others such as hydro energy in Norway balancing wind energy in Denmark A healthy balance of similarities and differences makes the Nordic region ideal for regional cooperation in energy technology development.
The Nordic region is world-leading with two thirds of electricity coming from renewable sources and only 15% from fossil fuels. But the story goes deeper than that. The common Nordic grid is one of the world’s most integrated, and by connecting the production and consumption of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Sweden, it allows the use of hydropower in the North to balance in times when windmills aren’t producing in the South. Cooperation paves the way to even higher shares of renewables in the Nordic Energy mix.
Advances in energy R&D also hinge on greater investment. Even with a renewed focus on clean energy under the stimulus packages for the financial crisis, governments in most industrialised countries today spend far less on clean energy R&D in relative terms than they did after the oil crises in the late 1970s. The IEA has stated that if we are to stay under a 2C increase in global temperatures, we need to increase the amount we spend on clean energy by a factor of 4, every year, from now until 2030.
Investing in energy R&D leads not only to a more sustainable energy system and increased energy security, but there are significant benefits in the production and sale of related technologies. Europe – and the Nordic region in particular – has long a held leading position in various clean energy technologies. Vestas in wind, REC in solar are prominent examples. But alone, the Nordic countries are small fractions of both the issues and their solutions at a global level. As a region of 25 million however, we become a larger player on the global stage, in fact put together the Nordic economies make up the 10th largest economy in the world, offering a diverse range of energy technology competencies under an increasingly recognised Nordic brand. But whether individually or together as a Nordic region, we can’t possibly hope to out-fund China or the US. Instead we must look to increase international R&D cooperation with our competitors and strengthen the global branding of our unique competencies. A prime example of this was the Nordic-Chinese Energy and Climate Day held in late June. Described in more detail in the following article.
In summary, we see the Nordic region as an ideal vehicle with which to reach ambitious goals. It is large and diverse enough to be a global player with a critical mass, but small and agile enough to act as a test bed for global solutions. We only need to look as far as our pockets to see an example of how Nordic cooperation has made an impact in the past. NMT (Nordisk MobilTelefoni) was the first fully-automatic cellular phone system, which opened to the public in 1981. This system laid the groundwork for future systems such as GSM, and was instrumental in the development of global Nordic companies like Ericsson and Nokia.
We see the Nordic region being a Green Valley in Europe, where new solutions are developed and tested before broader adoption. We are acting on this with a new programme looking at Energy & Transport – the automotive industry is one where bigger has definitely not been better in recent years. We hope the whole region can benefit from Oslo’s experiences in putting electric cars on its streets, for example. But whether it is transport or any of the many other sectors where sustainable energy solutions are needed, it’s better to learn from our neighbours than reinvent the wheel.
Anne Cathrine Gjærde
Director, Nordic Energy Research