[INTERVIEW] Norwegian renewable energy expert points 'offshore'

SINTEF's Executive Vice President Sustainability Nils Anders Rokke. Courtesy of Nils Anders Rokke

By Ko Dong-hwan

Nils Anders Rokke has been lauding "offshore" as the ideal strategic place for the expansion of renewable energy-based power generation and lower carbon emissions that the world ― on the verge of climate change-driven catastrophe ― desperately requires. The executive vice president of sustainability at SINTEF, Scandinavia's largest independent research institute based in Trondheim, Norway, has been proposing various means to achieve this in the vast area, some that have already been put in place by certain countries and some theoretically possible and in need of further research.

When he talked to The Korea Times to suggest some options that the South Korean government could actually pull off for its ambitious decarbonizing plan, he pointed to the country's easy access to surrounding oceans that perfectly match offshore energy production with offshore wind turbines combined with carbon capture, transport and storage (CCS).

CCS is comprised of technologies that capture emitted industrial carbon emissions and transport them either to use as an alternative energy source or bury them in safe places to ultimately prevent them from entering the atmosphere and thus raising greenhouse gas levels. He said it is a key technology in sectors where it's especially hard to reduce carbon emissions.

The technology is needed according to the International Energy Agency to reduce cumulative emissions by the 14 percent required to reach the Paris Agreement accords, and also to produce a source of natural gas that emits clean "blue" hydrogen. It is, in Rokke's words, a way to return carbon dioxide (CO2) to its original home.

"In Korea, as in Norway, the storage capacity will have to be found offshore," Rokke said. "Estimates of storage capacity (for Korea) I have seen are theoretically near 100 Gigatonnes (Gt)."

Emissions from industrial stacks cloud the atmosphere as they raise greenhouse gas levels across the globe and ramp up global warming. GETTYIMAGEBANK

He said Norway has sizeable capacity to store in sedimentary formations off its coasts ― about 70 Gt that could store 70 years of large point source emissions from the European Union. Norway's $2.7 billion CCS project "Northern Lights" ― the world's first full-scale CCS project collaborated in by Equinor, Shell and Total with $1.8 billion of the project cost funded by the Norwegian government ― captures carbon from industrial plants, compresses and transports it via tankers to permanently store it in a reservoir 2,500-3,000 meters below the North Sea's seabed.

He said that on a global scale, there is "ample storage capacity for a transition to a climate neutral society." In one of his regular columns in Forbes, he said there are existing, successful CCS operations in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

"If such storage capacities existed for Korea, this would be a very good opportunity for CCS for the country," Rokke said.

The former gas turbine design and development manager at Rolls Royce Marine was also positive about Korea's use of offshore wind turbines, which already contribute 124 megawatts to the country's electrical capacity.

Wind turbines in deeper waters have enabled the development of giga-watt sized wind power plants offering cost competitive electricity ― cheaper than new nuclear, according to Rokke ― and minimize the environmental impact of on-land wind farms.

The Moon Jae-in administration declared in July 2020 that it planned to expand wind power output to 12 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and make Korea one of the top five countries with the most advanced offshore wind turbine technology. Rokke said such a goal was "ambitious" given the current capacity, but added the country's access to offshore areas and a strong industrial base was "clearly present."

"Offshore wind power could become an important export industry for Korea and it could harvest renewable power to reach climate targets by 2030 and 2050," Rokke said, referring to the Moon administration's grand plan to neutralize the country's carbon emissions by 2050.

Ten offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 30 megawatts in waters off western Jeju Island were built by Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction and Korea South-East Power Co. in 2017. Korea Times file

In another Forbes column published in October 2020, Rokke said global technical potential for offshore wind power production is many times greater than global electricity consumption ― ideally, if countries worldwide joined in this bid altogether, annual production estimates would range from 329,600 Terawatt hours per year (TWh/y) to 420,878 TWh/y, while present global annual electricity production is around 27,000 TWh/y. And the technology's cost was "falling fast."

To achieve offshore wind power in the most cost-effective way, he said government subsidies can be used to open up markets and encourage early stage technologies to be implemented ― particularly floating wind turbines.

"I think Korea can make a difference in this quest," Rokke said. "Clearly there is an ongoing technology race to make floating offshore wind power affordable and boost learning curves."

Implementation in order

Implementing CCS or offshore wind power isn't just talking about technology. It also takes a process to be accepted within a social context that is concerned about nature, climate and local interests.

Haeundae District Office in Busan and residents protested in December 2020 against the central government's plan to build nine offshore wind turbines, producing 40 megawatts, 1.2 kilometers off the resort area near the port city. They argued the turbines disrupt fishing and the marine ecology.

Rokke said such a local clash is also a problem in his country as well.

"In Norway, nearly 100 percent of power production onshore is renewable through hydropower, and its potential is much larger," said Rokke. "But in the 1980s, people's opposition put a stop to further development because of dry waterfalls, rivers and ecosystem damage. Lately, there is also strong local opposition to onshore wind farms."

He said there is an ongoing discussion growing intensely in Norway in which Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government for giving new exploration permits for oil and gas activities in the Arctic. There was a similar claim in the Netherlands, which based on the Dutch Constitution won support in court, that demanded the government take more aggressive steps against greenhouse emissions.

"It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court ruling will decide on this in Norway," Rokke said. "It clearly shows that talk is not enough anymore but action is needed. The European Commissions' ambition for the EU to become the first continent to reach climate neutrality by mid-century also adds weight to this discussion."

Swedish oil company Preem launched a test facility for carbon dioxide capture at its refinery in Lysekil, Sweden in May 2020. SINTEF contributed to the development of the whole value chain in this Swedish-Norwegian CCS cooperation ― from capturing carbon from flue gases at the refinery's hydrogen gas plant to local storage and transport to a planned storage site off Norway's west coast. Courtesy of SINTEF website

Part of the reason there has been much litigation and clashes of local interest surrounding on-land renewable facilities, from photovoltaic systems in the middle of a city to wind turbines on mountains, is that available land is limited. Venturing to deeper waters, in contrast, removes such limitations, which makes Rokke's touting of CCS and offshore wind logically reasonable.

"Land is a limited resource and land use will become a more and rightfully so disputed topic," Rokke said. "Thus, using existing infrastructure and smart solutions will become very important in cities. Compared to Norway which is a scarcely populated country, I expect this to be even more important in Korea, one of the most densely populated countries in the world."

To Rokke, the climate crisis can be treated because it is "manmade," but the pace is too slow at present, especially with concerns about the incumbent energy and industry infrastructure. "In Asia in particular, there is a young stock of infrastructure where retrofit solutions will need to be employed, including fuel switching, efficiency improvement and CCS."

SINTEF's NOWITECH research center developed 40 innovations to utilize offshore wind power between 2009 and 2017, and has accrued 35 million euros ($43 million) from the value of just five of them. Rokke said seven other innovations' potential economic impacts were independently evaluated up to 5 billion euros.

In its effort to meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals ― the 17 common goals for sustaining the environment alongside the global economy agreed upon and propagated by U.N. member states ― the company invests its own funds in climate positive technologies, also called CO2 removal technologies. The investment is equivalent to $110 per ton of CO2 the company produces in their activities like flights within the EU or European economic area.

The measure came after the company saw that certain technology areas that are urgently needed for the world to be able to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming ― the core of the Paris Agreement ― experience total market failure.

"We see this as corporate social responsibility steps and as a research technology organization, our main contribution is through the impact of our research at large," Rokke said.