Energy landscape in Europe changed forever – Norway’s state secretary

BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 28. Energy landscape in Europe has changed forever, Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, State Secretary at the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Norway, said, addressing the 9th Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, Trend reports.

“The energy crisis is important for Norway because our neighboring countries are our most important trade partners. For example, so it's not a good thing for Norway that they close down industry in Europe, for example, and it is not a good thing for Norwegian energy investments the kind of volatility and uncertainty that we see in energy markets today. And then finally, on the perspective of the crisis, it is also a crisis that hits us in Norway as well due to the link between the power market and the gas market. So, we have seen record high electricity prices in Norway. That is challenging for Norwegians households, Norwegian industry and businesses. It is very much a crisis that we are concerned with in Norway, and we want to help work together with our neighboring countries to bring prices back to normal levels as soon as possible,” he said.

Eriksen believes that with the energy crisis, the energy landscape in Europe has changed forever and there is no going back to pre-war levels.

“So, I think even though the energy transition is happening much faster than we perceived just a year and a half ago, and that is a very good thing. Even on the Norwegian side, even though we have 100% renewable power generation in our mix today, hydro and windpower, we need a lot of extra renewable electricity to be able to get rid of our fossil fuel dependency and transform the transportation sector where Norway really has taken a lead going forward. So, the main challenge there is also for us to be able to get sufficient amounts of renewable electricity on the grid fast enough.

We see that the demand is ramping up really quickly. We will have a lot of extra demand the next couple of years, demand could increase by almost 50 percent only until 2030, and then we have to do a lot in our energy system, Europe has to do a lot in their energy systems, to be able to cope with that demand and the pace in the energy transition that we see right now,” he added.

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