Norwegian Climate Minister Espen Barth Eide arrives at an informal meeting of EU environment ministers at the Scandinavian XPO, in Marsta, outside Stockholm, Sweden, on April 18.TT NEWS AGENCY/Reuters
Norway will continue to deliver natural gas to Europe for as long as needed while also working to decarbonise the continent’s energy systems, its climate and environment minister said on Friday.
While Norway is Europe’s largest gas supplier it also aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels and be carbon neutral by 2050.
“We think it’s strategically important that we uphold these deliveries while there is still use, but we also work for the elimination of use, for the transition, from natural gas,” Espen Barth Eide told a Reuters Newsmaker event.
Norway was playing its part in the energy transition, he said, citing Oslo’s planned carbon capture and storage project using the North Sea, and converting Norwegians to electric vehicles (EVs), with four out of five new cars sold being EVs.
“We are actually trying to change the whole energy system of the planet. But then ... we are also the major exporter (of gas) to Europe,” he said.
“And the same European Union or the same United Kingdom, that wants to go clean over time, they would be rather unhappy if we told them by tomorrow ‘there’s no more new gas’.”
Overall, oil and gas would play a smaller part in generating income for the Norwegian economy in the future, Barth Eide said, though noting that “the future of gas will last longer than oil.”
“We’re beyond the peak, and are very much aware and even happy to say that oil and gas will gradually be a smaller part of our economy,” he said.
While Norway’s oil production peaked in the early 2000s, its gas production has risen and is expected to remain broadly flat towards 2030.