SEVERY TIME one year, Norwegian neighbors come together to sweep the leaves, prune the shrubs, weed the flower beds and develop their common spaces. These occasions belong to a tradition called dugnad (community volunteering). Cilia Holmes Indahl says Norway now needs dugnad on a much larger scale to make it a greener society. Ms. Holmes Indahl is the 30-year patron of Katapult, a group of companies that invest in tech companies with a green vocation. Katapult organizes an annual three-day “future festival” in Oslo, a mixture of technical conference and Burning Man.
Many young Norwegian greens want to wean their country from oil. Tech startups are proliferating in Oslo, helped by generous government grants. Startups have names like “Douchebags” and “Monster”. They meet in rooms called “Creative Cocoon” or “Bug Fixer”. They sit in open-plan offices in trendy factories, surrounded by fruit bowls and bean bags, dressed in obligatory sweatshirts and black caps. Last year, Oslo came third in the ranking of the most competitive cities in the world INSEAD, a European business school. Engineering graduates flock to the lucrative petroleum sector; Today, the oil majors are struggling to recruit talent.
Yet even though Innovation Norway, a public agency, has done a good job in recent years of promoting startups, the Norwegian economy will remain dominated by oil for the foreseeable future. Oil has transformed the country since its discovery in the Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea in 1969. Norway is one of the world’s largest oil exporters. Hydrocarbons represent half of its exports and 19% GDP. And another oil rush begins. Johan Sverdrup, a giant new oil field in the North Sea, could bring Norway around $ 100 billion over the next 50 years.
Sveinung Rotevatn, 32, newly appointed Minister of Climate and Environment, admits that Norway is a paradox – one of the world leaders in the use of renewable energy and technology, but also a giant in fossil fuels. Almost all of Norway’s electricity comes from renewable sources. Oil heating will be prohibited this year. Half of the newly registered cars are electric (Norway is one of Tesla’s largest markets). Oslo was the first city in the world to set a ceiling for its greenhouse gas emissions each year. At the end of 2018, it removed almost all of the downtown parking spaces, replacing them with benches, bicycle docks and other sidewalks. Last October, the world’s largest $ 1.1 billion Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, created in 1990 to prepare the country for a post-oil future, announced that it would sell all of its shares to companies dedicated to oil and gas exploration.
Is Norway doing enough to prepare for this post-oil future? Some argue that it should do more. “The government is deeply rooted in the old industries, but has shown no interest in investing directly in tech companies,” says Trond Riiber Knudsen, chief executive officer of TRK, an investment company based in Oslo. The State holds a third of the shares of the Oslo stock exchange, including significant stakes in Telenor, the largest telephone operator in the country; Norsk Hydro, its largest producer of aluminum; Yara, its largest fertilizer manufacturer; and DNB, its largest bank. It also controls certain unlisted giants such as Statkraft, a generator, which, if listed, would be the third largest company on the stock market. However, the state made no fuss when several successful technology companies were sold to foreigners. In 2010, Cisco, an American technology titan, paid $ 3.3 billion for Tandberg, a Norwegian manufacturer of video conferencing kits. In 2016, a Chinese group bought Opera, a Norwegian software company.
Ivar Horneland Kristensen, head of the trade and services federation, says the government should pay more attention to the service sector. Services represent 55% of GDP. Norway faces four challenges, according to Horneland Kristensen. It must reduce its concentration on oil and gas, increase its productivity through the use of technology, decarbonize the economy to achieve the objectives of the Paris agreement on climate change and create 25,000 jobs per year in order to that the dismissed oil workers remain salaried. .
Norway took advantage of its wise decision to save the principal and invest the yield of its oil wealth. But the size of its sovereign wealth – more than $ 200,000 for each citizen – encourages dependence. At least 20% of Norwegians depend on social assistance, and this does not include pensions. Norway spends 4.3% of GDP on disability benefits, the second largest OECD after Denmark. Young people have never known a country without oil wealth. They are used to excellent free schools and universities as well as free health care. But for how long?
“There is no future for oil,” insists Mathias Mikkelsen, 29 CEO of Memory, a startup that has developed an application to track time at work. Oil is new coal, so smart investors put their money elsewhere, says Inge Berge, CEO Wastefront, which, supported by Innovation Norway, is building a tire recycling plant. However, Mr. Mikkelsen and Mr. Berge have both benefited from the ecosystem for oil wealth funded startups – and would have a much harder time building their businesses without it. ■
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the title “Ecowarriors bankrolled by oil”