As global leaders, Canada and Norway’s co-operation is timely in the face of surging energy demand

In March 2023, Canada and Norway issued a joint assertion on bilateral co-operation. Notably, the assertion emphasised a dedication to “attaining carbon neutrality by 2050, to selling analysis collaboration and to growing commerce and funding in clear applied sciences and renewables that help enable a green and just transition.”

Co-operation on vitality transitions gives a well timed technique to strengthen this bond from 2025 onwards, greater than ever in gentle of unfolding occasions on the worldwide stage.

Canada and Norway have a protracted historical past of sturdy collaboration: they’ve had formal bilateral relations since 1942have been founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 and the Arctic Council in 1996 and co-signatories to the Canada-European Free Commerce Affiliation’s Free Trade Agreement since 2008.

Canada’s and Norway’s geographical and socio-economic similarities are hanging, and assist clarify this energetic kinship.

An opportune second

Unfolding geopolitical developments—Russia’s invasion of UkraineChina’s continued rise and U.S. President Donald Trump’s second time period—make it fascinating to deepen connections between Canada and Norway.

As researchers in environmental coverage, we argue that this collaboration ought to give attention to advancing the vitality transition. Right here, each international locations are confronted with great alternatives, but additionally troublesome choices that require political gumption. There are nationwide elections that can happen in every nation this yr, which makes this a very opportune political second to deal with this concern.

Each these climate-ambitious petro-powers have nice potential to co-create pathways for prosperity. Each might conceivably implement superior vitality transition methods that target using fossil gasoline reserves judiciously and purposefully to finance local weather change objectives.

The Nationwide Financial institution of Canada envisioned one thing like this in a 2023 report, persevering with discussions that date again at least a decade. The report concluded that: “Just like Norway, Canada is effectively positioned to learn from each an financial and environmental standpoint if its current vitality assets will be leveraged to finance the transition to green energy.”

In the meantime, Norway’s Authorities Pension Fund World crossed US$1.7 trillion in 2024, bearing testomony to the monetary power the nation has derived from the petroleum period.

Electrification

The connections between fossil gasoline wealth and a climate-friendly transition present a lot potential. Nonetheless, too typically these advocating for continued exploitation of carbon-based assets fail to acknowledge the accelerated phaseout timetable wanted for greenhouse gasoline emission reductions. The usage of pure gasoline as a transition gasoline, as an illustration, requires a long-term plan for carbon neutrality. With out that, deployment successfully locks in decades of additional emissions.

We’re all for utilizing nationwide assets for wealth creation in the event that they quicken fossil gasoline phase-down. However investments that impede this—corresponding to state support for offshore wind development to electrify offshore oil rigs in Norway—should not solely counter-productive, but additionally hypocritical.

The actual promise these international locations maintain for the vitality transition is within the name to electrify (almost) everything. This method concurrently makes use of two pathways: “greening” the electricity grid with low-carbon energy sourcesand shifting fossil gasoline vitality demand onto these clear electrical energy grids.

Digitalizationwhich refers back to the wider socioeconomic adjustments inextricably linked to the shift from analog to digital methods, must also be seen as a parallel precedence to allow real-time co-ordination of electrical energy demand and provide throughout coupled sectors.

World management

Each international locations have already got comparatively inexperienced grids. In Canada, nearly 80 p.c of electrical energy was generated by carbon-free sources in 2023; in Norway, the equivalent figure was greater than 98 percent. These figures measure up favorably in comparison with many different international locations: about 60 p.c of the world’s electrical energy is provided by fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas.

For context, these inexperienced and greener grids have been achieved in an period of comparatively flat electrical energy demand in lots of components of each international locations. However that’s altering: sector calls for like mobility, heating and data centers are already proving to be significant new consumers of electricity. Large portions of extra electrical energy must be quickly generated whereas sustaining system stability.

Electrical energy demand is anticipated to double in each international locations by 2050, reaching 1,300 TWh in Canada (greater than doubling the 2023 quantity of just under 600 TWh), and 260 TWh in Norway (137 TWh in 2023).

How these two frontrunner states exchange current carbon-fueled infrastructure and meet the anticipated progress in electrical energy demand is of world curiosity.

Power technique

In coverage phrases in each Canada and Norway, this technique to impress (nearly) the whole lot is effectively underway. Canada’s local weather change motion plan consists of commitment to a green grid by 2050and implementing Clean Electricity Regulations.

Norway is closing in on its target of 100 percent vehicle sales being electric. And this June, the nation is internet hosting the United Nations-supported Internet Governance Forumwhich is an space essential to the sustainable vitality transition.

Actions must observe ambitions, particularly in industrial processes like steel-making where deployable solutions appear further down the horizon.

Stronger bilateral collaboration might additionally end in optimistic outcomes in geopolitical developments in the Arctic. Quickly consolidating commerce relations extra broadly has not often been so essential from a political perspective. Constructing this collaboration alongside vitality transition synergies presents benefits that stay gravely underexploited.

That is doubtless as a result of political and financial standing and sway that petroleum incumbents have held. However the twin transition of low-carbon electrification and digitalization gives Canada and Norway an opportunity to co-operate and lead their world areas into a brand new period of greener vitality.

Constructing upon their shared geographies, constructions, experiences and values, the time is ripe for collaboration on the sustainable energy transition. This might embrace authorities officers, people from utilities and regulators, trade representatives, members of civil society and Indigenous organizations, researchers and lecturers.

Collectively, Canada and Norway have the potential to work in tandem to maneuver in the direction of a extra affluent and sustainable world future.

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