Episode 81
Beyond Oil: Norway’s Dilemma at the Crossroads of Climate and Capital with Siddharth Sareen, Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute
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My guest today is Siddharth Sareen, an award-winning Research Professor working at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway.
Highlights:
- We explore the energy transition in Norway, emphasizing the need for systemic changes over individual actions, with a global perspective.
- The conversation highlights the importance of collaboration across sectors, blending academic knowledge with artistic expressions to drive societal change.
- Siddharth's interdisciplinary approach integrates environmental science with social equity, revealing the complex layers of energy governance and its implications for justice.
- The podcast delves into the Beyond Oil conference, discussing its evolution from focusing on solutions to adapting to changing climate futures and societal challenges.
- A key takeaway is the role of storytelling and art in communicating complex issues, making academia accessible and relatable to the wider public.
- Siddharth shares insights on energy poverty in Norway, emphasizing that even in a wealthy country, many people face significant challenges related to energy access.
Links referenced in this episode:
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
You are listening to Stories for the Future and my name is Wesley Mai Clavnesberge.
Speaker A:Today I'm going to be really quick with my intro and the reason for that is that this is a slightly longer episode and I really want you to listen to all of it.
Speaker A:My guest is Siddharth Sarin, who is a research professor at the Fritjofenansen Institute in Norway.
Speaker A:I will leave it to him to introduce his work.
Speaker A:But I will tell you this.
Speaker A:I really enjoy talking to people from academia when they are good at explaining what they do in a way that is relatable to people outside of academia.
Speaker A:And Siddharth does just that.
Speaker A:We dive into the energy transition, especially related to Norway, but also with a global perspective.
Speaker A:We talk about collaboration across sectors, the importance of systemic changes over individual actions, and the crucial role of storytelling and art in driving change, to name a few things.
Speaker A:And if you stay till the end, you will get to know his artistic side as well.
Speaker A:You don't want to miss that.
Speaker A:Welcome so much to Stories for the Future.
Speaker A:Siddharth, thank you so much for taking the time, because when doing the preparation for this episode, I can see that you are a really big busy guy.
Speaker A:So I'm almost surprised you had the time.
Speaker B:Happy to be here and looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:So you have a double PhD in Development Studies and Forest and Nature Management.
Speaker A:You have a Master in Development Studies and you are a research professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway.
Speaker A:Can you just briefly share with us your main focus area in your research?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:I've worked over time on the governance of energy transitions at multiple spatial scales.
Speaker B:I work as a development researcher, also as a political ecologist and a human geographer within the broad field of environmental and energy social science.
Speaker B:So I'm quite interdisciplinary.
Speaker B:I also work in a transdisciplinary way, collaborating with artists, for example, and spend a good bit of my time interviewing engineers and others about quite technical details of energy systems.
Speaker B:But I'm very interested in in environmental and social equity and justice.
Speaker B:So as we go through this really exciting and terrifying period of energy transitions to hopefully build something better and fairer that's still allows us to have a stable society in an inclusive way, I find that I am fascinated by the very many different things there are to learn along the whole value chain of the energy system, from deep extractive zones to the transmission and distribution of electricity.
Speaker B:Work quite a lot on solar energy in particular, and also on smart grids and smart electric meters.
Speaker B:And then over to energy end use, whether it's in the form of transport, which is also a rapidly electrifying sector, or questions of energy services within the household, where then there is considerable work with policy impact around energy poverty.
Speaker B:And increasingly I'm fascinated by what happens across numerous sectors like transport and electricity and low carbon energy sources, since these are more and more connected through digitalization.
Speaker B:Not just the movement from analog to digital, which is digitization, but also its larger repercussions in the socioeconomic domain to which digitization is intrinsically linked.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Oh, so many things, Aaron.
Speaker A:We will come back to a lot of them.
Speaker A:But let's start start with the reason that I connected with you actually, which is the Beyond Oil conference.
Speaker A: ce which has been going since: Speaker A: ference and what is coming in: Speaker A:And I'm also really curious about the name like Beyond Oil.
Speaker A:What does that actually mean in practical terms?
Speaker B:Sure, yeah.
Speaker B: ally wasn't in bergen for the: Speaker B: er since I moved to Bergen in: Speaker B:So there were these, you know, we've had different themes every other year, but always with Beyond Oil as as the title.
Speaker B:And until this upcoming edition, we also started with the sentence the world is inevitably moving beyond oil.
Speaker B:And this year, on the theme of changing climate futures, we've actually turned it around to ask is the world moving beyond climate futures?
Speaker B:Because it seems that on the face of things, there's very many reasons to worry.
Speaker B: ived the last few years after: Speaker B:So I've been very mindful of these tensions between a society that is deeply anchored in fossil fuels over the last, you know, half a century of our history here, and one that also has quite high ambitions, has been a front runner in some aspects of low carbon transitions, has also quite an impressive history with the hydropower and reverse hydro pumping of being a technological frontrunner on some forms of energy production.
Speaker B:So really.
Speaker B:And now that I live in Oslo, I have a Professor 2 position at the University of Bergen.
Speaker B:But I do think that this is one of the things I really look forward to as part of my engagement in Bergen, to being part of thinking through what do we want to platform, who do we want to Invite what kind of conversations are important and timely to have around the question of moving beyond oil?
Speaker B:I think to me, those questions the last 10 years, and of course I partly channel some of the reflections from our conversations as a set of colleagues at the center for Climate Energy Transformation in Bergen, are that we are in for a good deal of devastation, of difficult times.
Speaker B:Many tens of millions of people have already felt the impact of climate change in terrible ways.
Speaker B:We see this with wildfires, we see this with floods.
Speaker B:We see this with large climate events that have been worsened and exacerbated.
Speaker B:They're more intense, more frequent, more unpredictable than before.
Speaker B:So these are all things that climate science has told us we have coming and there's a range of impact.
Speaker B:And it seems increasingly evident that the way we're going, we're going towards a very unfortunate end of that spectrum.
Speaker B:We see really rapid climate change underway.
Speaker B:We've by many estimates already shot past 1.5 degrees.
Speaker B: So what does that mean in: Speaker B:We're not meeting those goals.
Speaker B:And a very important kind of foundational aspect for this conference is that many of those reasons are societal or political.
Speaker B:These are questions of governance, these are questions of, of culture and decision making cultures.
Speaker B:So sure, there's important roles for technology to play, for technical decisions to play, but really many of the ways in which the, the endeavor to move beyond oil is shaped have to do with what happens in the sociopolitical domain.
Speaker B:And so even though it's a conference that is quite interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, we also have performances.
Speaker B:We have a very convivial vibe to it.
Speaker B:It's usually around 100 people, a bit more.
Speaker B:We keep it fairly small and intimate to create space for those exchanges for people to reflect together, to have a, a safe space in which you can go a bit out of your comfort zone with, with different others.
Speaker B:But even so, I'd say there's an anchoring in environmental, social science and the humanities.
Speaker B:There's a concern for those societal aspects that we really need to understand and to work with for the kind of ambitious and rapid change that is necessary.
Speaker A:You had different themes for each conference.
Speaker A:Would you say that it has changed from like, oh, we have to, we are going to fix this to like, now more adapting or you called it this next year.
Speaker A:Is climate futures changing, changing climate futures.
Speaker A:So would you say that the kind of, the mood has changed during these 10 years when it comes to accepting that it will be.
Speaker A:We know that it will be really tough and we already see It.
Speaker A:But how do you see that?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker B:I think there's been some really interesting conversations around questions of hope versus doom and gloom.
Speaker B:I'm very interested, both conceptually and hands on in pre figurative politics, which is sort of roughly translated to be the change you want to see.
Speaker B:But I think for climate and energy scientists, even though the evidence seems to be increasingly harsh that we're failing quite badly, we're not transitioning fast enough, we aren't doing it in ways that are just enough.
Speaker B:I think for most people it's clear that, well, if you're in the sector, whether you're working hands on, working as an engaged researcher, you need to see the kinds of goals that we have, you need to work towards them.
Speaker B:Because what is the alternative?
Speaker B:Should we just give up or should we accept a very unfair world where terrible things happen that affect, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in terrible ways?
Speaker B:Not to forget nature and landscapes and human nature relations, all of that.
Speaker B:So there's so much at stake that I don't really think that giving up or accepting less ambitious goal is, is on the table.
Speaker B:I think having those ambitious goals is important because it motivates not only action, it motivates concern, it gives, it offers scope for the kind of push that's necessary.
Speaker B:And then there's still a political battle to be fought, there's still budgetary allocations that researchers don't decide about typically.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And often, as we see in very recent developments, researchers are in many fields quite adversely affected by some of those funding decisions as well.
Speaker B:So there's also a struggle within academia for how to do the kinds of things necessary to enable evidence based policy making.
Speaker B:That said, the evidence for the need to do something has been very clear for a very long time.
Speaker B:So we aren't failing because we don't know what's to be done.
Speaker B:We're failing because we don't seem to be able to move as a society or as many societies globally in the direction of securing our collective interest.
Speaker B:We tend to focus very much on a world of elitism where a small minority sits with a large share of resources and gets to exert undue influence over decisions.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:So, you know, I think it's really interesting that you have this very international background.
Speaker A:I think I read that you have been working on projects in seven different countries or something, so spanning from India, Denmark, Norway, Portugal.
Speaker B:I've worked on Portugal.
Speaker B:I've never been based there institutionally, but I have spent, I guess, seven odd months over the Last seven, eight years doing field work there.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Solar energy transitions.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you have this global perspective, and I think that a lot of people, Norwegians as well, see this when we travel to different countries, that you see Norway from the outside, which is often interesting, kind of get this other perspective.
Speaker A:So I think Norway is in this very, I don't know, interesting position where we keep pulling out oil and gas while still wanting to be a kind of a climate champion.
Speaker A:What do you think that.
Speaker A:And seen also from the outside and with your perspective, what was a good energy transition look like for Norway?
Speaker A:It's a really difficult question, I know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's one that we never seem to land.
Speaker B:But I think that conversation is, of course, an essential one.
Speaker B:And yes, it's important to keep it going.
Speaker B:And the answer, even if we don't kind of have a final one, does shift shape from time to time.
Speaker B:So at the moment, we have very intense conversations happening within the country around electricity and decision making for that sector.
Speaker B:And I think that in those debates, many of the key tensions that come up revolve around really, capacity building.
Speaker B:How do we have a sector that's based on renewables in which people see themselves as having green jobs, as having a basis to maintain a quite privileged lifestyle?
Speaker B:And it seems to be human nature that we don't.
Speaker B:Even though there's very interesting emergent research around sufficiency, we seem to have a tendency to strive for more and more.
Speaker B:And when you've had a society that's had a lot of resources and money over, you know, it's been some generations now, it does change the way that one views the world, the expectations one has for one's own life.
Speaker B:And it might not be true at an individual level.
Speaker B:There's always variation, but there are some general trends.
Speaker B:So I've done field work and spent a good deal of time in places where people live very marginalized lives, people who are not part of a monetized economy, who are living in the forest with subsistence agriculture and some sort of foraging.
Speaker B:And that's, of course, not the context that we're in in Norway.
Speaker B:And yet we have tensions, as we've seen come out with the fossil case, with the Sami people and, you know, reindeer herding and this shift to a different landscape with wind turbines, that we find different kinds of tensions on who Norway is for, what the future of Norway and energy in Norway is supposed to do.
Speaker B:Is it just supposed to be more and more, or is it supposed to be about finding ways to advance energy efficiency, about finding ways to live within our means, finding ways to regulate and govern energy systems, given the enormous competitive technological possibilities that have emerged with low carbon sources.
Speaker B:And by that I mean solar and wind and to some extent hydropower developments around reverse hydro pumping.
Speaker B:I also mean energy flexibility through energy battery storage, through the integration of multiple sectors.
Speaker B: level in Norway, you know, in: Speaker B:We can see a pulse every 10, 15 minutes for the live consumption of electricity down to the household level.
Speaker B:So I think that there's a lot that we can do, we're rapidly electrifying transport, but there's also a lack of humility and of acknowledgement that we are part of one world and that whatever happens in that world does actually matter to us and will come and hit us.
Speaker B:And also that it will hit others that we care about and rely on.
Speaker B:So I think the conversation in Norway that is hopefully coming up faster and faster, is that what we see happening in Europe the last few years, the need for very ambitious renewable energy development in ways that displace fossil fuels.
Speaker B:That that conversation matters to us, that we need to exit a fossil fuel economy.
Speaker B:We might be exporting it, but we're deeply reliant on it.
Speaker B:And we have an amazing financial position with the pension fund global with the kind of flexibility that gives us to really invest in sources and energy systems that many other countries can only dream of.
Speaker B:They have to go through very much more difficult processes as society to be able to make certain socioeconomic commitments and priorities.
Speaker B: king on solar energy there in: Speaker B:They couldn't subsidize renewables, even though there was a party leading government that was quite favorably inclined to renewables.
Speaker B:And what they recognized was that they didn't need to do that in Portugal with solar at the time because it was starting to become competitive and achieve grid parity.
Speaker B:And since then they've rapidly increased the share of solar from 1 to 10% of the electricity grid mix.
Speaker B:And there's lots of good examples of those things in Norway and in Nordic countries.
Speaker B:This, you know, I could name specific projects and pilots, but as long as we don't move away from oil and gas jobs, paying the biggest salaries, offering people the most security, it's hard for people individually to make those decisions when it's about putting.
Speaker B:Not exactly about putting bread on the table, but it's still a question of bread and butter.
Speaker B:Yes, a good helping of butter.
Speaker A:Yeah, a good helping.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:Yes, this is, this is the big question, I think.
Speaker A:And I have this related thing that I'm thinking a lot about because it has to.
Speaker A:And you said you have been working in Stavanger, the energy, energy capital, you said oil and gas capital.
Speaker A:Energy capital Norway.
Speaker A:And I wonder how much is also in the wording.
Speaker A:You work with art and you actually write poems.
Speaker A:We will come back to that.
Speaker A:But every former oil and gas company and every kind of department, all organizations formally called something with oil and gas, has changed their names to energy.
Speaker A:And I have a lot of guests on the podcast who also still work in that sector, and many of them, and I'm not critiquing anyone criticizing anyone, but they say, when I use the words oil and gas, they say, oh, it's not oil and gas anymore, it's energy.
Speaker A:And I compare this.
Speaker A:I was thinking about this this morning.
Speaker A:I compare it to if you want to start running, for instance, like motivators and self help people say, start calling yourself a runner.
Speaker A:You don't have to wait till you run a marathon before you can call yourself a runner.
Speaker A:Just call yourself a runner.
Speaker A:So do you think the same goes for energy?
Speaker A:I don't think I would like them to still call themselves oil and gas because that would kind of be like giving up.
Speaker A:We will always be oil and gas.
Speaker A:But still, is it okay to call yourself a runner if you're still kind of 99.6% couch potato, if you see what I mean.
Speaker A:Still 99.6 or 7 or something of the energy produced by Equinor comes from oil and gas.
Speaker A:So how to do that?
Speaker A:And I understand why they changed the wording, but shouldn't it come with some kind of accountability?
Speaker A:That's my question.
Speaker B:Well, that's one of my key research interests.
Speaker A:Yes, I know.
Speaker B:And also legitimacy.
Speaker B:What do we derive legitimacy out of?
Speaker B:And Equinor drives it a lot more out of spectacle of funding a nice concert of promoting elite sportspersons and having this green image.
Speaker B:And they've done very little, if anything at all to promote renewables, to promote a responsible energy transition.
Speaker B:They've pushed things like carbon capture and sequestration that are really about prolonging the fossil fuel industry and driving more public investment.
Speaker B:We see terrible decisions at the national level in Norway about Electrifying offshore petroleum rigs.
Speaker B:That's just putting a lot of public support towards sunset industry.
Speaker B:So make no mistake, I have a clear line on this and the science is clear on this.
Speaker B:Unless you're a fossil fuel industry paid shill and I think even they acknowledge this in private conversations.
Speaker B:It's a sector on its way out and it's all about perceptions, management and about keeping a financial position that allows you to maximize your bonuses and get out at the right point.
Speaker B:And I think the problem is that in Norway we're missing that boat that others are taking because we have this idea of Norwegian exceptionalism, that even if all of Europe, which is, you know, the part of the world that Norway is in, even if all of Europe goes politically in one direction towards ever more entwined commitment with, with low carbon energy futures, that we will have this card we can play of exporting gas, of being a friend to the continent and be able to kind of, yeah, foi poso sec to use a knowledge and expression to have it, to have it both ways.
Speaker B:But geopolitics is a tricky space and the world is changing as we see in the Arctic.
Speaker B:I have a piece out with a colleague today about Canada and Norway and how we see these petro states in a position to really collaborate and take forward energy transitions together in a spirit of mutuality that would be really important for the world and for an important global region.
Speaker B:Trade routes are opening in ways that will redefine our economic future as climate change worsens.
Speaker B:But it has not only perilous impacts, it also creates opportunities and, and you see a lot of this.
Speaker B:So to, to underestimate the role of geopolitics, of power relations between countries is very naive and ill informed and one can't imagine that because we electrify our, our extraction that then, you know, the Middle east is going to shut down their operations and say Norwegian oil and gas is cleaner, so everybody should use that.
Speaker B:That's not how the world has ever worked.
Speaker B:So when I hear those arguments that are trying to very creatively say we'll be fine and we should keep doing this, I worry that they are prolonging a gigantic mistake that's costing you and me.
Speaker B:And I know you've worked in the sector and have a lot of friends who work in the sector and I'm not, you know, I'm careful not to push people away or to try to make it a conversation where some people are squeezed out, but I'm also careful not to censor myself and not call a spade A spade because there are technologies that work, they are more cost competitive.
Speaker B:The fossil fuel era is held up by trillions of dollars of global subsidies without which it cannot compete with renewables.
Speaker B:That is fact, that is something any researcher who has integrity will give you a hard agree on.
Speaker B:And if you work with that understanding, then a lot of decisions become very clear.
Speaker B:For our national position.
Speaker B:Those decisions have to do with building out a more distributed, spatially distributed energy system.
Speaker B:We have an advantage with a very high degree of digitalization.
Speaker B:We can use geothermal, we can use the rapid cost declines that are continuing and will continue most likely for some years around energy storage.
Speaker B:We can think about what flexibility we can derive from our, our decarbonized transport fleets allowing us to use them creatively for a lot of flexibility.
Speaker B:Yeah, there can be aggregation as well.
Speaker B:So these are issues we could talk a lot about, but maybe that's for another time.
Speaker B:Yeah, but if we're not moving in that direction, then others are and they're building out companies and they're building out businesses and they're taking over market share.
Speaker B:So every year we lose on that is losing economically for our future and our jobs.
Speaker B:And we have an amazing financial position where we could take a leadership role there.
Speaker B:And that's really where the fossil fuel era does damage because it wastes time and money on things that are not going to pay us back.
Speaker B:They're paying us now and fine, continue with that until it wraps up.
Speaker B:But investing in it, expanding further into the Arctic for offshore exploration and drilling, those are, that's farce.
Speaker B:That's not a, that's not an evidence based decision.
Speaker B:That's a power play by incumbents.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:So when you talk about fear, transition and also do you talk about that related to Norway or is it your work more related to more vulnerable communities in other places also affected by energy poverty, which you also talk about.
Speaker A:Can you just explain a little bit about that?
Speaker B:It's always context specific.
Speaker B:I work ethnographically so I work closely with people and places and I have worked a fair bit on Norway.
Speaker B:Norway, Portugal, India have been my long running in contexts of interest.
Speaker B:And then I've worked in maybe a dozen European countries and a bit recently in Uganda, a bit in North America and, and I think what's key with Norway is that there is not one formula right for this is how we will move to a particular energy future.
Speaker B:It's up for discussion and debate and, and I write a column in, in Altinga around energy and climate politics and I try to play in with some of my reflections from research in diverse contexts to see what we can harvest for a Norwegian audience, for a Norwegian setting.
Speaker B:And actually one of the things, since you brought up energy poverty and distinguished, you know, these contexts, it looks different in different places.
Speaker B:But I've done research on energy poverty in Norway and we have a surprising amount of it here as well.
Speaker B:We have people who are marginalized like any society.
Speaker B:We have inequality.
Speaker B:We are not, again, we are not different from the rest of the world.
Speaker B:We are better positioned in some ways and worse than others, you know, And I think we're also vulnerable in ways to climate change that might, you know, have gone a bit under the radar.
Speaker B:So we had this National Commission on Climate Risk some years ago and they came up with Norway being the second or third least vulnerable to climate change and second or third best position to deal with it, to adapt.
Speaker B:And I think it's important to consider the unknown unknowns as well as some of the known unknowns.
Speaker B:So we're very vulnerable when it comes to our supply chain for food, for basic essential resources.
Speaker B:And in a world where things change to put us in a quite frightening place geopolitically, which could happen, which there has been a great deal of concern about in recent years, there still is.
Speaker B:Then you find that not having food security or being quite vulnerable if certain supply chains around energy are cut off leaves you in a position where money can't really buy your way out of everything.
Speaker B:So does that leave us more at risk?
Speaker B:But I think the report identified financial instability in the global markets is actually the, the biggest source of risk for, for Norway.
Speaker B:And that says something, right, that, that, that might not actually be that unlikely a situation.
Speaker A:No, absolutely.
Speaker B:We need to put our eggs in multiple baskets, I think, is one of the key things.
Speaker B:And I think we need to work with very simple things.
Speaker B:When I lived in Stavanger, I, I worked quite a bit on urban transport and I routinely pointed out the enormous gaps in the system.
Speaker B:We have five of Norway's 10 richest municipalities in and around Stavanger, and it has a terrible public transport system.
Speaker B:So it doesn't help that we, you know, approach 100% sales of electric cars, which are massively resource consuming and which are subsidized and which are owned by quite rich people.
Speaker B:If we can't even connect people, families, children, elderly people to something like the County Arboretum in Rogaland, you can't get there by public transport.
Speaker B:That's a public investment.
Speaker B:And it's not accessible unless you get into elite consumption.
Speaker B:Why don't we build a society that's much better than that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So I've worked, I am working still with Stavanger municipality and some of the important industries in that area, like Skretting and Felischo, who do you know, cattle feed and poultry feed and fish feed.
Speaker B:And those are very globalized supply chains, globalized industries.
Speaker B:But they also produce a lot of waste heat locally and they've been, you know, partly powered by, by gas and then they have all this heat that's going waste as steam off the roof.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And we're working to find ways in which the municipality could enable and those industries which are very important heavy industries in the area.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Process industries that they could help to build a circular economy to reuse that heat in helping Lucer to expand the district heating grid, which does exist around that area of Hillelwald.
Speaker B:And that's a fascinating possibility.
Speaker B:And then I look at examples of, you know, the school in Drumlin where they have the geothermals project where they've put a bunch of solar on the roofs and they've dug a bunch of geothermal wells.
Speaker B:And the University of Starvanga recently did that and has really gone down in its electricity or its energy cost and also really moved a lot more to clean energy sources by using flexibility, by using the local natural resources and the assets that we have in a lot of Norway.
Speaker B:So I would love to see way more attention to those possibilities, investment in those and in working across these different actors.
Speaker B:And we really struggle because municipalities.
Speaker B:I named Stavanger also because it's one of the 112 mission cities in Europe.
Speaker B:So it has very ambitious climate goals, it has a climate and energy plan.
Speaker B:And it's been really hard to make anything approaching that scale of ambition in terms of actual progress.
Speaker B: % emission cuts by: Speaker B:And the worry from that is that people lose faith.
Speaker B:They think that these targets are just window dressing, you know, and you see what, what some of the oil and gas companies have been doing.
Speaker B:They've put up targets and now they're backsliding and, and moving away from them.
Speaker B:And that means that they kind of hold climate activists or regulators at arm's length and say, well, we're, we're cleaning up our act.
Speaker B:And then after a few years they say, haha, fooled you.
Speaker B:We didn't really mean that.
Speaker B:The world has changed.
Speaker B:We have a bit more space for Political wiggling.
Speaker B:And we're going to use that to maximize shareholder profits and that's our job as a corporation.
Speaker B:Yeah, if that's how we're going to work with, you know, this idea of market rules.
Speaker B:But then we continue to subsidize renewable, subsidize fossil fuels and penalize renewables with a lot of regulatory, technocratic lethargy, a lot of hangups that really don't provide a fair space for those technologies to compete and we don't back up our targets with actual regulatory measures, then we are a chance based nation.
Speaker B:Then we risk being called out for not walking in the talk.
Speaker A:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker A:Do you think that because I look a lot on the kind of the individual level and having come from this industry myself, you know, I've been through that, that whole journey.
Speaker A:Do you think that the people losing hope when you see that?
Speaker A:Yeah, they said that they're doing something else.
Speaker A:Do you think that the people working in the industry will maybe be the ones to make the move?
Speaker A:Finally I talk about this, I write a little bit about it now and I call it sandpaper on your conscious like this.
Speaker A:You have this cognitive dissonance, you know, that is really frustrating and difficult to live with.
Speaker A:So I don't know how much contact you have with people inside the industry, but do you think that, that at some point will be too much so that people will start living more than they do today?
Speaker B:No, I don't think that individual, that individual.
Speaker B:I think there are a lot of well meaning people and I think that a lot of people try to follow their conscience.
Speaker B:But I don't think that changes of this scale and of this urgency can take place with individuals trying to find their way out of a difficult place with limited options.
Speaker B:I think there has to be systemic and systematic commitment and then it's really important the role that individual agency plays in that.
Speaker B:So you need people to be motivated, you need them to want to contribute to something, you know, larger than themselves.
Speaker B:I mean it's a really amazing challenge and the nature of my work is to talk to very many different kinds of people.
Speaker B:So I do spend time in rooms with people who spend most of their life in industry and others who, you know, are quite vulnerable people and others who spend a lot of time thinking about the tech stuff or about the policy stuff.
Speaker B:And, and, and I'm very conscious.
Speaker B:And this is also something that we try to, to act on at beyond Oil, that we're people as academics where people who are paid to think and we have time to take in These different perspectives and, and analyze them and bring them into conversation with each other.
Speaker B:And that's an enormous responsibility.
Speaker B:And it's also hard work.
Speaker B:And once you do that, you don't sort of just put it into a paper, you put it into, into play in society.
Speaker B:You create spaces in which those conversations can happen.
Speaker B:You penetrate spaces where they're unfolding and you reframe some of the perspectives.
Speaker B:You bring people into contact with each other.
Speaker B:Sometimes, as we did in Bergen, we were brought together different actors within the same municipality who are then working on different aspects of a problem that is related.
Speaker B:And they can see that it's related.
Speaker B:And we've been working in our research on how it's related.
Speaker B:But they don't have, in their busy jobs and in their day to day responsibilities and targets, they don't have the space or an incentive to talk to each other across those institutional silos.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:So how can you build ambitious targets for decarbonizing transport on the one hand, decarbonizing building energy on the other hand, spatial planning and compact cities on the third hand, if those people don't talk to each other because each of them need to change their sectors in dramatic ways and those bring their sectors into closer relationship with each other.
Speaker B:So we need to also change institutional silo culture, and that includes across business and the public sector.
Speaker B:There are frequently these conversations in Norway about the role of the public sector and, you know, slussing and if there's too much inefficiency and bureaucracy, and I think the public sector always plays an important role, there are things that can work better that if we give up on it or if we say, well, we'll fix this with, you know, the market and getting private actors to take charge, then we're losing sight of the fact that we're a society that has built an enormous state, a very competent state in many ways.
Speaker B:And we see the terrible things happening in the U.S.
Speaker B:when that unravels, that the state plays many roles that the private sector can never fill.
Speaker B:Because if your ontology or the way that you're set up as a sector or a corporate actor or a public entity, if that is geared towards one thing as it's God, so maybe profit as it's God, then you don't provide the end user a service that is about well being.
Speaker B:You provide something that maximizes your bottom line.
Speaker B:You can do it responsibly.
Speaker B:If you have sustainable targets and good monitoring and follow up and you align your incentives at the firm level to be able to move towards Cleaner rates.
Speaker B:You also do it so that you know, you do it in a cost efficient way and that over time it pays off.
Speaker B:But if you have, as you always will, societies with people who need support, and it's terrible to think of a society where Everybody is a 40 or 50 year old man in a suit who does very well for themselves and can go out and have a good time, I mean that's, that's not the world we live in and it's not the world we want to live in.
Speaker B:So if we have a society that takes care of everyone and takes people along, then we need a well functioning public sector.
Speaker B:And if we have a society that over time can move towards more enlightened ways of living in relation with the world, with our environment, with each other, across countries and continents and across neighborhoods.
Speaker B:You know, even our cities in Norway, you can see it in Oslo that there are differences in different parts of the city, in different neighborhoods.
Speaker B:We're not all the same or living the same lives.
Speaker B:I found in, in Osterbudel in Stavanger, we did some work around energy poverty and we found rates indicatively well above 10% of people.
Speaker B:Pensioners, students, living vulnerable to.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:In their energy use and access.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And costs.
Speaker B:So I guess there's room for a lot of everything, but not in a sense that means anything goes.
Speaker B:There are targets that we have in place and they're progressive targets.
Speaker B:And we have societal commitment to inclusion, to sustainability.
Speaker B:And that's really important because that's also not something we can take for granted.
Speaker B:So I feel very happy about many things that we have in Norway that are in place as a society.
Speaker B:We're quite a cohesive society.
Speaker B:We're quite a caring society.
Speaker B:And I think it's important to say that.
Speaker B:So it's not just.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:But I wonder, I.
Speaker A:You mentioned the silos.
Speaker A:I'm wondering if you have with every.
Speaker A:All the people you talk to and all the different environments that you connect to.
Speaker A:Have you seen some good examples of projects that challenge these silos?
Speaker A:Because people in their day to day job, they're so busy with all the things they have to do, so they don't have time or capacity to talk to other silos.
Speaker A:So I have some examples myself.
Speaker A:But can you mention some that are working?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:I'll mention a couple that are quite close to my heart and my attention at the moment.
Speaker B:And one's around Oslo municipality.
Speaker B:They recently gave out 4 millions to energy flexibility measures by housing cooperatives, by small companies that would then trade flexibility on the energy market.
Speaker B:So it's helping not, you know, individual households, but maybe 100 odd households together to be able to invest in resources like solar panels on their roof, like battery storage, so that they're able to actually have some demand response.
Speaker B:They're able to reduce their demand on the electric grid when the prices are high.
Speaker B:So you get system efficiencies from that, you can stop, you know, importing very high priced electricity or.
Speaker B:And then they get paid for that service.
Speaker B:And the fact that we have a municipality that's supporting a small number of these projects with ultimately a small amount of money in the big picture, that has incredible potential.
Speaker B:Because if you can see that this works for one housing cooperative and others can go and visit it, there's nothing stopping 100 others getting involved.
Speaker B:And we have this on a number of projects around renewable energy communities that I'm part of in various bits of Europe.
Speaker B:You see this, for instance, there's one called Reschool that's run out of Girona in Spain, in Catalonia.
Speaker B:And they had the regional government involved and you know, they had nearly 200 municipalities within the region and they had this plant that was creating amount of clean energy that could be distributed across a few hundred socially vulnerable households at a very competitive rate, cheaper than the electricity tariffs because it is a more economic, economically competitive source.
Speaker B:And because they could see that it worked as a demo, they could ask all the municipalities in the region and almost 100 of them said, yes, we'll do this.
Speaker B:There's a national support scheme for it as well.
Speaker B:So you don't see 100 megawatts here changing a landscape.
Speaker B:You see lots of hundred kilowatts times a thousand.
Speaker B:You know, that can then amount to your 10 megawatts here and 100 megawatts over a region.
Speaker B:And that becomes a really big useful development.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Who also build resilient energy systems.
Speaker B:You're not vulnerable if one plant, one big plant gets put out of action.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Interesting.
Speaker A:And I, I really like that they provide such, such good examples, you know, so other, others can see it and then just replicate and okay, they can do it and we can do it.
Speaker A:And then that brings me to you talked about art, poetry actually, but also like storytelling.
Speaker A:How much do you think that has to say for the future?
Speaker A:That we try to build how we share the stories and give the good examples and how, how does that storytelling happen?
Speaker A:In the best possible way.
Speaker B:In so many ways.
Speaker B:For me, the best possible way these days is reading bedtime stories to my three year old daughter.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that, you know, reminds me.
Speaker B:And I listen to a lot of audiobooks lately and we all have imaginations.
Speaker B:We live partly in the world we're in, but partly that world and understanding of it is shaped for us through the stories that we hear and the stories that we tell.
Speaker B:I often find listening to, you know, different presentations at meetings or conferences.
Speaker B:I, I see especially in some corporate slide decks, there's a, a photo of their child towards the end doing something, cleaning up waste at the coast, right?
Speaker B:And it's about creating a world, leaving behind a world that you can be proud of, that your children and grandchildren can thrive in.
Speaker B:There's the Grandparents Coalition for Climate Change, which is such important work in the public sphere in Norway to shape that conversation, people taking responsibility, many of whom have been part of the, the petroleum story that has been an important part of Norway's development last half century.
Speaker B:And you know, I don't think I would have had a very desirable academic position in this society without it being a society that has a lot of resources and has, you know, commitment to trying to figure out how to shape a better world and doing something about it.
Speaker B:So I, I think the stories we tell have real power and we don't always know and we can't always see in the moment what that is.
Speaker B:And I guess that's also why to me, these different forms of communication are important.
Speaker B:Partly it's about getting word out to different, what I call different epistemic communities, different kinds of people, people who would never read a journal article on a topic I write about, but who might enjoy the textile art of Margaret Abreka, who I worked with quite often, or who enjoy the comics of Leo Ribeiro, with whom I've also really enjoyed working.
Speaker B:And you know, I'm going to take some of those comic books we co produced and give them to my wife's class at a, at a public school in Oslo.
Speaker B:And they're working on their 6th grade projects right now.
Speaker B:They call it exhibition and, and some of them might pick up on questions of urban transport, or they might think about how do I communicate messages, like through a comic scale.
Speaker B:So I don't know what it does, but of course there are examples.
Speaker B:Somebody comes to you at some point and says that thing you did, or that work that really touched me, or, or they encounter it in a cafeteria.
Speaker B:You know, it's hung up on a wall and they talk about it while getting a coffee.
Speaker B:And that's a contribution and it's not one that we will put in our impact for a Research project, but that's really not what it's about either.
Speaker B:We also get shaped in that process.
Speaker B:When I engage with an artist and I see how they approach the issues that we're working on together, how they think about, how to get the message across, what kind of people they think it's relevant for.
Speaker B:That helps me reflect on my work and my way of work.
Speaker B:Right, yes.
Speaker B:That's an enormously important thing as well, that over time, we don't get plugged out of society into being a very specific part of it.
Speaker B:Most researchers are quite privileged people.
Speaker B:There is some vulnerability and insecurity.
Speaker B:Early career in one's academic career, typically the way that our sector is structured.
Speaker B:And I've been part of the Young Academy of Norway, so it's also something I care about and want to emphasize.
Speaker B:But I'm very conscious of that privilege.
Speaker B:So I can't be just in my role and feel very satisfied sitting at a desk writing great thoughts.
Speaker B:That's not the only thing of an academic role.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So connect to other bubbles, as I call it often.
Speaker A:Like, there's one woman in Sweden who has written about bubble jumping.
Speaker A:I think that is a very interesting concept.
Speaker A:Try to see things from different.
Speaker A:Try on different shoes, as I say, boundary spanners, as.
Speaker A:Yes, yeah.
Speaker B:And intermediaries.
Speaker B:And there are lots of words.
Speaker B:And those words do important work in different communities because people attribute meaning to them and it helps, you know, make for more meaningful conversations among those groups.
Speaker B:But things that go across them, hopping across bubbles, things that connect those people to each other, to bridge institutional silos, for instance, those are also really important.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Their stories can help.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And another way of thinking that.
Speaker A:I had another guest on the podcast who talked about the perspectives that we often see, them versus us or something like that.
Speaker A:She used the example of two football teams, Dutch football teams that are strong competitors in some cases, but then there's the World cup, and then suddenly it's the Dutch against the world.
Speaker A:And then if you raise that perspective, again, it's kind of us, people on earth against.
Speaker A:I don't know, you don't have to be against anything, but, you know, just raising the perspective.
Speaker A:We're all earthlings and we just have to fix this in a way.
Speaker A:So we have to go in, we have to land this.
Speaker A:So I'm really, really curious about your climate poetry and first of all, where you share it, but also if you would like to give us an example of kind of the work that you do.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Thanks.
Speaker B:Yeah, always happy.
Speaker B: me of a poem I wrote back in: Speaker B:I spent a bit of time at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Seattle's the sister city of Bergen, where I was living at the time.
Speaker B:And you know, there's this totem pole at the tip of Nornness in Bergen that's a gift from Seattle.
Speaker B:And so that features in this poem and a number of other things we've talked about about also feature.
Speaker B:It's called the Case for Hope Amidst Climate Change Catastrophe.
Speaker B:And in terms of the conversation that was happening around climate change and you know, in beyond oil, in the year before and after that, among other places, I think that this question of what role does hope have had come up really front and center partly because David Wallace Wells had written this very popular recent New York magazine, yeah.
Speaker B:Around Apocalypse.
Speaker B:And it sparked this debate on is this a way to motivate people?
Speaker B:Is this helpful versus well, it's important to tell people the gravity of the situation and how the stakes are.
Speaker B:So I wrote this as doing some climate activism events in the, in the public square, but also, you know, and with, with the, with the Set center colleagues there.
Speaker B:And also because the.
Speaker B:There was a group from Lofoten that had come over and was having an event at Cafe Opera around telling stories and sharing over a bowl of soup and yeah.
Speaker B:That we're all in this together.
Speaker B:So the Case for Hope Amidst Climate Change Catastrophe.
Speaker B:Is hope apocalyptic after all?
Speaker B:Does it let us wait, twiddling our thumbs in between bursts of furious activity?
Speaker B:Do we find kindred spirits in our search for salvation and think we are closer to accomplishment, when in fact loss follows loss?
Speaker B:Wildfires burn, countries drown, species disappear.
Speaker B:Or would that be an unkind misconstrual?
Speaker B:Do times like this render us in need of friends now more than ever?
Speaker B:Is compassion our mast?
Speaker B:Hope our guiding star?
Speaker B:And empathy born of friendship, the wind in our gutsy sails?
Speaker B:Who loses what prevails?
Speaker B: We fought for Initiative: Speaker B:To a politics of trying, of recognizing what times call on us to do, to make polluters pay, to compensate victims of fossil fuels and give a chance to an energy sector powered by renewables in the here and now rather than a decade hence.
Speaker B:But Big Oil poured in millions.
Speaker B:Money talked and people listened.
Speaker B:The initiative took a beating.
Speaker B:Opportunities are fleeting and it's already out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker B:All that we must leave behind.
Speaker B:No time to mope, no time.
Speaker B:The only way to cope is to return to hope.
Speaker B:Or is it?
Speaker B:Does Hope motivate here in Seattle's sister city, connected by a totem pole down at Nornness in Bergen?
Speaker B:Or does remoteness obfuscate while hope simply distracts, Sustaining the unsustainable, regurgitating facts about 1.5 degrees while delaying acts that would keep it all in the ground, firmly under the sea out around Lofoten, where our politics floundering much like Pacific island states, what scope is there for hope when murder merely agitates?
Speaker B:Blinded by greed, a world that's rigged to keep expanding Drilling pumped by oil, we grease the wheels and keep the coffers filling.
Speaker B:Softly we murmur we are better than others at not spilling the most majestic icebergs thaw, glaciers are melting, new trade routes emerge as opportunity that submerges hope, it is a more powerful motivator.
Speaker B:What about the opportunity to save hundreds of millions, entire coastal cultures from submergence?
Speaker B:When debate is anchored in opportunism, hope is reduced to a spectacle.
Speaker B:We must defy and contest such imaginaries, call them out consistently as misleading hope mongers.
Speaker B:Hope is not Janus faced.
Speaker B:It does not look away when counter arguments are deposited.
Speaker B:Hope rests in respectful judgment, in rooting for measured deliberation with no respect, no room for basic dignity, no recognition of the right to life in all its fullness and adversity.
Speaker B:It is apocalypse Now.
Speaker B:Channel hope to resist the dislocation that perpetuates fossil fuel hegemony and paves the way for regulation to depoliticize what is the most political thing of all, our future, our here and now.
Speaker B:The right to echo the call championed by Greta Thunberg.
Speaker B:Hope is a tool to levy reasonable demands in unreasonable times.
Speaker B:Expecting power to yield to truth, we live in an apocalyptic moment that empathy and friendship help us recognize solidarity as our vessel of choice.
Speaker B:And on these tumultuous waters, under cloudy skies, hope is our guiding star.
Speaker A:Beautiful.
Speaker A:It's a perfect combination with your research.
Speaker A:Yes, great.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for this.
Speaker A:It's been so interesting and I think we could have had a follow up or two episodes because there's so much to talk about.
Speaker A:But thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:I think that the message I'm going to highlight from this conversation is the science is clear and the oil and gas sector is on its way out.
Speaker A:In Norway, we risk missing the boat due to this idea of Norwegian exceptionalism.
Speaker A:At the moment, it's all about perception, management from the industry and keeping a financial position that allows them to maximize bonuses and get out at the right point.
Speaker A:That does not send a good message from a country that has a fantastic financial position and should be taking a lead in the right direction.
Speaker A:That is pretty clear, I would say.
Speaker A:And as I said in the beginning, I really like it when researchers and academics speak a language that is understandable.
Speaker A:As always, I will put all the links and resources in the show notes.
Speaker A:You can read more and follow my work on vklavnes.subs.com and@storiesforthefuture.com thanks for listening and see you next time.
Speaker B:SA.
