
Highest Carbon Tax in Norway Prods Statoil to Try ‘Batwind’
By Jessica Shankleman
(Bloomberg) — The highest carbon tax in an oil producing nation has persuaded Norway’s state-owned driller to experiment with batteries and wind generators in its place for supplying electrical energy to offshore rigs.
Statoil ASA is planning to park its floating Hywind generators subsequent to rigs, utilizing lithium-ion batteries to retailer vitality for occasions when the wind isn’t blowing, mentioned Stephen Bull, a senior vp overseeing the work. If it succeeds, the expertise could unfold to the fish-farming trade, which additionally has huge offshore electrical energy wants.
The mission dubbed “Batwind” is an instance of innovation that governments are hoping to encourage by placing a value on the air pollution that causes world warming. Norway fees as a lot as 436 krone ($53) per metric ton of carbon emitted for fossil fuels extracted on its continental shelf, 10 occasions the value of certificates within the European Union’s offset market.
It’s the “financial upside” that’s making the mission extra enticing financially, Bull mentioned, whose firm desires to be the world’s greenest fossil-fuel producer. “When you look at the platforms and you look at the exposure we have for power and carbon dioxide, it’s considerable.”
Norway’s carbon tax is the fourth-highest on this planet behind Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, none of which produce vital portions of fossil fuels. The subsequent highest at about $25 a ton is the U.Ok., in response to the World Bank’s annual report in the marketplace.
Norway was one of many first nations to undertake a carbon tax in 1991, and the price now covers about 55 p.c of the nation’s CO2 emissions, in response to the World Bank. Emissions not lined by a carbon tax are included within the nation’s ETS, which was linked to the European ETS in 2008.
Statoil has already dedicated $214 million to the Hywind offshore wind plant, which is able to provide 30 megawatts when it’s full in Scotland in 2017. That in itself is exclusive, since solely about 8 megawatts of floating offshore wind is working worldwide up to now, in response to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. By 2018, Statoil will add a 1 megawatt-hour of batteries to the Hywind mission at a price BNEF estimates at $1.2 million extra.
Batwind is necessary as a result of it’s considered one of a handful of large-scale examples the place corporations are utilizing storage units to stability the variable energy flows coming from a renewable vitality generator. If perfected and economical, the applied sciences used collectively could unfold, difficult diesel turbines and possibly even coal crops, whose major promoting level is reliability.
“It is expensive, there’s no doubt about it,” mentioned Bull, who declined to offer price estimates. “The key part for us is being able to offer predictability on power and that has a much higher value than the variability.”
Battery Wind
The lithium-ion battery parts within the battery-wind mission, or “Batwind” for brief, will come on-line in 2018. Together, they’ll be hooked up to Statoil’s floating wind farm in Scotland as a part of an illustration mission.
“Statoil is well on the way to competitive costs, having already shown a price per megawatt drop of 77 percent from its from first demo turbine in 2009 to its latest array,” mentioned Tom Harries, an analyst at BNEF.
While it could take one other decade or extra to make floating wind generators as low-cost as ones anchored to the ocean flooring, Statoil’s mission is could show that marrying the 2 applied sciences might help generate clear electrical energy extra economically. It’s additionally being helped by the falling price of lithium batteries, that are being pushed down by a increase in hybrid-electric automobiles. Battery storage might fall by as a lot as 52 p.c, to $182 per kilowatt hour, by 2025, in accordance BNEF.
Batteries enhance the attraction of the mission by making certain a gentle provide of electrical energy will circulation, making Batwind as dependable as extra polluting incumbents for small-scale backup energy. Bull mentioned fish farmers in Norway have already got approached Statoil about tapping its electrical energy.
“Many of them come to us, saying ‘we’re burning a lot of diesel, it’s costing us a lot of money,”’ Bull mentioned. Norway is the world’s largest salmon market, exporting a file 48 billion Norwegian krone ($6 billion) of trout and salmon in 2015.
Statoil could even search to promote its Batwind energy-storage options overseas. It has purchased domains in key markets together with the U.Ok., Japan and U.S.
“It’s a must-have skill set for us,” Bull mentioned. “We’re going to have to get our head around storage technology — particularly if we’re going to make floating a valued proposition in other countries beyond Europe.”
–With help from Whitney McFerron.
© 2016 Bloomberg L.P