SPEECH OF THE ENERGY DIRECTOR 

(Radio Luftballett Jingle)

I was born in the sixties, and when I grew up in a village not far from Bergen, a lot of people were still farmers and they had to utilize, really utilize, all available resources in order to make a good, or reasonable, living. Today the people in that village, and in Norway in general, are not so much linked to the local resources anymore. We buy things from all over the world, we travel all over the world, and we--- I think many Norwegians in some way think that the resources are unlimited. Because many Norwegians have enough money to buy whatever they want. And they don’t think that- if they don’t get what they want one place they can get it from another place. So there is basically not limitations on the resources they can utilize. And that is a very important structural shift from utilizing local resources and be very closely linked with the resources in your vicinity – to this kind of we-buy-what-wewant and we do not feel the limitations so much.

(Radio Luftballett Jingle)

My name is Kristin Guldbrandsen Frøysa, and I am the Energy Director at the University of Bergen. The challenge with replacing petroleum, fossil fuels, with renewables, is enormous. And many people are afraid of this deep transformation that we need to do, in order to have a sustainable energy system. But I think it is important to remember that we have made major shifts earlier as well--- people have gone from using horses to cars, - from sail to steam engines, - and also we have had the very rapid shift when internet was introduced. And I think people living today can hardly think about life 30 years ago – with no smart 
cell phones, no internet, you can`t hardly-- you cant imagine-- cause it has transformed our society in a very, very deep way. So-- we have had rapid transformations of our society and our lifestyles earlier as well-- and that should give us the courage to do the transformation away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. There are of course a lot of challenges. Today’s infrastructure. Coal fired plants. Oil platforms. Gasoline cars. And so on. So of course- today`s infrastructure-- is a part of the problem. But there are a lot of signals that this shift from fossil fuels to renewable--- can be made rather fast---and much faster than people 10 years ago thought, with for instance the solar PV becoming very cheap, onshore wind, you have offshore wind, the prizes are decreasing very fast, and you have also a lot of economic incentives to do this shift. But also you have other drivers. You have pollution, where people in heavily polluted cities, like Beijing, New Delhi, and many other cities, say that we, we will not accept this pollution. And that will of course force a transition to renewable energy. And you have people and organisations that have sued governments, because they say that ``you knew about climate risk. You knew about climate change. But you did not do enough to stop CO2 emissions. `` And of course that is also a force. That forces politicians to do something in order to reduce CO2 emissions. So, - the reduction of CO2 emissions from energy, there are many, many forces that go in the same direction and will force this shift and it might come much more rapid, rapidly than people thought.

(Radio Luftballett Jingle)

Renewable energy --- that is just part of the solution to the much more comprehensive problem of sustainability.
And United Nations do have 17 sustainable development goals. Agenda 2030. And these goals are kind of pointing towards the society we would like to have. And one of the goals is goal number 7. Clean and affordable energy for all. Another goal is ``Climate Action`` which is goal number 13, and then we have a challenge, in goal number 8, which is economic growth, and of course, economic growth, at least in Northern Europe, is really in conflict, ehm, I would say, with Climate Action for instance. Because Economic Growth in our region, implies that people buy much more goods, and that is not sustainable. So a challenge when it comes to sustainability—is-- we have to think about our economic system. And we had a conference in Bergen, 1st week of February, hosted by University of Bergen, dealing with the conflicts between various sustainable development goals – and one of the sessions-- was addressing goal number 8, economic growth, and climate action. And we discussed both renewable energy, but also, how the economic system is shaped, and whether we need a reshaping of the whole economic system. In order to meet peoples needs --- but not to overshoot the limits of the earth. So I think these are very important questions. And this is a challenge that cannot be solved by individuals. We need political solutions. We need structural changes.

(Radio Luftballett Jingle)

We have seen a major structural shift from 100 years ago in the Norwegian society. Where at least many people were very closely linked to what they could get out of the local resources --- to todays society where people buy whatever they want, they travel wherever they want, and even though if people start to not throw away that much food anymore, reduce the consumption of meat, and so on, it`s still just a very tiny change, compared 
with a structural change, so I think we need to assess our system, and our structures, in order to both have a renewable energy system, but also to reduce our consumption and make our economic system sustainable.

(Radio Luftballett Jingle)