On the first day of Arendalsuka, HYDROGENi Centre Director Nils Røkke (SINTEF) and Centre Manager Stefania Gardarsdottir (SINTEF) participated in a panel debate on the role of the North Sea in the future energy system.
Arendalsuka (lit. “Arendal’s week”) is a Norwegian political festival that takes place in August every year, in Arendal.
The event was entitled Nordsjøen som løsning på klima- og energikrisen: Tre råd til politikere (The North Sea as a Solution to the Climate and Energy Crisis: 3 Tips for Politicians), and organised jointly by SINTEF Energy Research and NTNU Energy.
Together with Johan Hustad (NTNU), Stefania and Nils went through the three pieces of advice that had been developed for the strategic development of the North Sea – “our silicon valley” – to ensure acceptable electricity prices, and sufficient value creation and reliability for consumers, while implementing an energy transition that meets our climate goals.
- Together with the other North Sea countries, Norway must create a roadmap with an action plan for the future energy system in relation to the North Sea.
- R&D collaboration with other European countries must increase in order to ensure value creation.
- We must ensure that our processes are knowledge based and inclusive.
Hydrogen is one of the many environment-friendly technologies that the North Sea can enable the development of, including offshore wind, zero-emission oil and gas, and CO2 storage. In particular, Nils referred to the North Sea in terms of Norway’s potential to become a “hydrogen nation”. HYDROGENi was one of the five Centres for Environment-friendly Research (FMEs) that contributed to the scientific report that formed the basis of this guidance.
The livestream of the event is currently available to watch on YouTube (in Norwegian with sign language).
Hydrogen continued to be a recurring topic throughout the entire event.
In a video summarising her experiences at Arendalsuka, Stefania mentioned the interest she had experienced in topics like hydrogen:
“We spoke a fair bit about hydrogen in the maritime sector – this is a very important area for Norway, where we have the potential to adopt hydrogen and hydrogen carriers here at home, but also develop technologies that we can export to a large market in Europe and around the world.”
