Abstract

Dr. Dag H. Zeiner-Gundersen states that Norway has through the last decades built most of its wealth on exploitation of non-renewable energy sources in form of oil and gas. With emissions, global warming, and environmental changes highly caused by burning of such fossil fuels, it is his opinion that there is a special duty to funnel wealth earned from such exploitation back into developing and enhancing renewable energy sources. The “low hanging fruits” that create real disruptive innovations are becoming less common within the field of renewable energy and sustainable solutions. In my opinion, increased basic research is required and to a degree beyond merely application engineering of existing technologies (Figure 1). Norway, as for many large energy nations, has too many non-sustainable “pearl” energy projects, too many “bread and butter” renewable research projects and too few sustainable disruptive “oyster” projects. Such “oyster” projects are those that will bring quantum leaps, if successful. I believe our current energy development thinking is too risk avert, short term driven, application engineering oriented, versus the need for real technology drivers.