Is reducing oil production a sound climate policy?

While Norway's oil production carries on at full throttle, Norwegian climate policy is showered with criticism. Professor Gunnar S. Eskeland looks forward to an exciting debate about the oil producer vs. green-minded nation-dichotomy at the BEEER conference 12 and 13 May.

05.05.2014 - Sigrid Folkestad

Bergen Economics of Energy and Environment research Conference (BEEER) will be held at NHH for the fifth time Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 May.

A contradiction

There are two keynote speakers at the conference. Professor of Economics Knut Einar Rosendahl from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, speaks on Monday morning. His lecture is titled "Petroleum Policy as Climate Policy."

Rosendahl's presentation points towards the open and somewhat broader debate on climate measures and oil policy later in the evening, a policy that has triggered questions from international media.

In a chronicle in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Rosendahl quotes The Economist.

"Home to a green-minded people and government, Norway exports the dirty stuff to the rest of the world. The result is a contradiction."

Klaus Mohn and Kjell Lund

Rosendahl and others have studied the effects on global emissions if Norway was to change its petroleum policy and reduce oil production. Such cuts would not reduce emissions much in Norway, but may reduce global emissions, Rosendahl and his colleagues conclude.

Norway's total CO2 emissions are 44 million tons per year, while burning of Norwegian oil leads to emissions of nearly 300 million tons of CO2 at the current oil production-level.

UN advisor Kjetil Lund and Professor Klaus Mohn also participates in the debate.

Lund is an economist and has been an advisor at the Office of the Prime minister and State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance. He has worked on climate policy and financing for a many years, and especially how green funds can stimulate and contribute economically to initiate climate measures in developing countries.

Klaus Mohn is former chief economist at Statoil, and became a professor at The University of Stavanger in 2013.

Professor Eskeland expects thought-provoking and exiting contributions from the three debaters.

Speaker from London

Professor Derek Bunn from London Business School is the second keynote speaker.

His speech is called "Modelling the Emerging Price and Asset Performance Risk in Power Markets".

As always at BEEER, especially young researchers have been invited to contribute.

"This is part of the BEEER philosophy," says Eskeland, himself an environment economist at NHH's Department of Business and Management Science.

"We want young researchers who do climate research to meet each other, no matter how different their approaches may be. Thus, we always have many PhD students at the conference."

BEEER Conference 2014:
In total more than 30 papers will be presented during the conferences five sessions.

BEEER conference committee:
Gunnar S. Eskeland, Einar Hope, Endre Bjørndal, Stein Ivar Steinshamn, Linda Rud, Shiyu Yan and Olga Pushkash.

The conference is held in co-operation with SNF, IAEE Norge, CenSES and BKK.

Find the conference program at www.nhh.no/beeer