• Energy Research

The Nordic CCS roadmap is developed in the NORDICCS project, a collaborative research project between leading CCS research institutions in the five Nordic countries. The roadmap will outline jointly developed Nordic strategies for widespread implementation of CCS in the Nordic countries in order to help Nordic industries meet a carbon constrained future with a high price on carbon emissions. It will identify pathways and milestones for large-scale Nordic implementation of CCS resulting in beneficial economies of scale that will increase the likelihood of implementation. Several novel cases will be presented that reveal future Nordic opportunities, including industrial CCS where emitters have large point sources of CO2 localized in clusters, and natural gas sweetening with the potential for use of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) to defray the costs. Recommendations will be made for actions relating to joint political work in the Nordic region for improving the framework conditions for CCS.

Buildings account for more than 40 % of the total energy demand in the European Union (EU). The energy sector is responsible for 80 % of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, of which more ...

Stabilizing global greenhouse gas concentrations at levels to avoid significant climate risks will require massive "decarbonization" of all the major economies over the next few decades, in addition to the reduced emissions from other GHGs and carbon sequestration. Achieving the necessary scale of emissions reductions will require a multifaceted policy effort to support a broad array of technological and behavioral changes. Change on this scale will require sound, well-thought-out strategies. In this article, we outline some core principles, drawn from recent social science research, for guiding the design of clean technology policies, with a focus on energy. The market should be encouraged to make good choices: pricing carbon emissions and other environmental damage, removing distorting subsidies and barriers to competition, and supporting RD&D broadly. More specific policies are required to address particular market failures and barriers. For those technologies identified as being particularly desirable, some narrower RD&D policies are available.

The paper evaluates to which extent that different designs of Voluntary Agreements (VAs) can work as catalysts for Policy Learning (PL) and thus contribute to improved policy design and management processes. Through a literature study, it is found that VAs in the form of Negotiated Agreements (NAs) are more successful in promoting PL than other types of VAs that have less focus on the participatory aspect of the policy processes. The paper contributes to the existing VA policy literature through highlighting the predominately overseen learning values of implementing NA as well as providing policy recommendations on VA learning processes.

This paper investigates the role of governance dimensions in socio-economic transitions in line with degrowth, i.e., an equitable downscaling of the economy. Our focus is on experiences from the 2008 economic crisis in Latvia and Iceland. Although these cases are not in themselves examples of degrowth, we see them as important sources of empirical learning from major socio-economical transitions; furthermore, we see crises as possible starting points for future degrowth transitions. This paper applies a governance framework to explore the vast differences in management strategies and crisis outcomes in Latvia and Iceland. In Iceland, public resistance led to a shift in policy measures such that economic inequality and the negative social consequences of the crisis decreased. In Latvia, public resistance existed but had no strong influence. The outcome in Latvia included none of the elements of equitable downscaling found in the case of Iceland. These two cases show how differences in formal institutional arrangements, political culture and societal trust affect different governance dimensions during a time of crisis. The analysis illustrates the importance of institutional and governance dimensions in major socio-economical transitions, and demonstrates how they influence the kind of transition that can be realized.

Pledge-and-review is an essential pillar for climate change mitigation up until 2020 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this paper, we build on a survey handed out to participants at the Seventeenth Conference of Parties in 2011 to examine to what extent climate negotiators and stakeholders agree with existing critiques towards pledge-and-review. Among the critique examined, we find that the one most agreed with is that the pledges fall short of meeting the 2 degree target, while the one least agreed with is that pledges are voluntary. We also find that respondents from Annex 1 parties are more critical than respondents from Non-Annex 1 parties. Negotiators display strikingly similar responses regardless of where they are from, while there is a remarkable difference between Annex 1 and Non-Annex 1 environmental non-governmental organizations. We build on these results to discuss the legitimacy of pledge-and-review.

Buildings are expected to play a key role in the development and operation of future smart energy systems through real-time energy trade, energy demand flexibility, self-generation of electricity, and energy storage capabilities. Shifting the role of buildings from passive consumers to active players in the energy networks, however, may require closer cooperation between the energy and buildings sectors than there is today. Based on 23 semi-structured interviews and a web survey answered by key stakeholders, this study presents the views of the energy and buildings sectors on the current energy challenges in a comparative approach. Despite conflicting viewpoints on some of the issues, the energy and buildings sectors have similar perspectives on many of the current energy challenges. Reducing CO2 emissions is a shared concern between the energy and buildings sectors that can serve as a departure point for inter-sectoral cooperation for carbon-reducing developments, including the deployment of smart energy systems. The prominent energy challenges were identified to be related to low flexibilities in energy supply and use, which limit mutually beneficial cases, and hence cooperation, between the energy and buildings sectors today.