Over the last few decades, the oil and gas industry’s role in the green transition has been heavily debated. In Norway—the world’s 12th largest producer of crude oil and 8th largest producer of natural gas—a recurring argument has been that the industry should help drive this transition. To green the oil industry and cut domestic emissions, successive governments have promoted electrification of offshore installations, carbon capture and storage solutions, and development of offshore wind. Since around 2008, a growing number of politicians have called for Norway to become “the green battery of Europe” and a “wind power nation.”Footnote 1 Offshore wind has been presented as “a new industrial adventure,” on par with the petroleum “adventure” of the 1970s.Footnote 2 Leading Norwegian oil companies have played roles as important investors in offshore wind, driven by political signals, global trends, and commercial and reputational motives. However, the development of offshore wind in the Norwegian North Sea has been hampered by suboptimal geological conditions, high costs, and the country’s access to oil and hydropower. This has created a distinct form of carbon lock-in, sparking political and sectoral conflicts that have constrained progress.
This article is concerned with how and why leading Norwegian oil companies have attempted to redeploy into offshore wind, and how this redeployment has related to political developments and sectoral interests. More precisely, the article examines the offshore wind investments of Hydro and Equinor (previously Statoil) amid political shifts from 1998 to 2024. Statoil and Hydro were developed as large national oil champions during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, to secure national control over Norwegian petroleum resources. In the 2000s, they also emerged as pioneers in offshore wind technology, and became key investors in foreign, and eventually domestic, wind projects. In 2022, Equinor, which acquired Hydro’s oil and gas division in 2007, launched Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest floating wind farm. This move made the company accountable for 47% of global offshore floating wind capacity.Footnote 3
On the basis of a broader interest in how states collaborate with oil sector interests in attempts to green oil-based economies, this article poses the following three research questions: Why did offshore wind power emerge as Norway’s preferred political response to demands for increased renewable energy production? Which interests shaped this development? And what role did Hydro and Statoil/Equinor play in the process? To answer these questions, the article conducts an empirical analysis of political and corporate documents and reports, as well as magazine and newspaper articles, primarily retrieved from various digital archives. As no historical studies focus exclusively on this topic, rather addressing it within broader corporate histories or decarbonization frameworks, this article contributes to existing research with a focused and more detailed analysis of the interplay between leading oil companies’ renewable investments and political changes and priorities. Theoretically, the study builds on Jon Birger Skjærseth and Tora Skodvin’s foundational but still valid finding that the domestic political context is the primary determinant of oil companies’ climate strategies, but posits a reciprocal influence: national oil majors may also significantly shape how governments balance competing priorities of fossil fuel production and advancing climate strategies.Footnote 4
The article begins by reviewing the state of the field. It then follows a historical analysis in four chronological parts, exploring technological optimism, climate ambitions and conflicting pressures, economic realities, and the impact of global fluctuations. Together, these sections show how offshore wind development in Norway has been politically inconsistent, partly nonstrategic, shaped by oil price volatility and, later, fluctuations in the global offshore wind industry. The analysis spans from the launch of Norway’s first energy balance report in 1998, which called for the development of more renewable energy sources, to 2024, when offshore wind had become central to both climate and energy policy, with oil and gas companies increasingly redeploying into this sector.
Oil Companies and Investments in Renewables
Studies devoted to investments by oil companies in offshore wind are scarce in historical literature. While oil companies’ investments in solar power can be traced back to the Mexican Gulf in the late 1970s, as demonstrated by Geoffrey Jones, their investments in offshore wind power are more recent and therefore less well covered in historical research.Footnote 5 However, several historians have written extensively on the oil industry’s strategic response to climate change from the 1970s onward, with some briefly touching upon wind power. Christophe Bonneuil, Pierre-Louis Choquet, and Benjamin Franta’s study of Total’s responses to global warming reveals how the company began to invest in solar power in the late 1970s but made no actual changes in its oil-based business model.Footnote 6 Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes’ analysis of ExxonMobil’s climate communications (1977–2002) demonstrates how the company dismissed solar and wind energy as too costly and unreliable.Footnote 7 Keetie Sluyterman’s research shows how Shell made modest solar investments from the late 1970s onward, and prioritized solar and wind under a new “Renewables” unit in 1997. While solar slowed in the 2000s owing to a mismatch between production and demand, Shell remained committed to start-up wind projects.Footnote 8 Marten Boon’s study on decarbonization efforts in the oil industry more broadly argues that, although there was never a strong industry commitment to develop renewable energy sources, wind power has been “among the largest and more sustained renewable and clean technology investments by the industry.”Footnote 9 His volume on Equinor’s history also confirms sustained investments in offshore wind technology as part of a corporate diversification strategy.Footnote 10
To understand Norway’s shift toward offshore wind and the oil industry’s redeployment into this industry, it is essential to consider oil’s central role in the nation’s economy. The literature on this topic is extensive, but Francis Sejersted’s seminal essay on the development of what he termed “the oil–industrial complex,” a system of state ownership, regulation, and partnership with oil companies, offers a useful framework.Footnote 11 The oil–industrial complex has driven technological progress but also hindered the development of alternative energy sources. Sejersted argued that Norway, which had been self-sufficient with clean hydropower since the mid-20th century and had significant oil resources, was marked by a dynamic that exemplified Beck’s idea of “organized irresponsibility,” a situation where environmental risks were created collectively while responsibility was diffuse.Footnote 12 Scholars such as Matto Mildenberger have later echoed this view, emphasizing how close ties between governing parties and oil industry’s interest organizations have obstructed progress in Norway’s climate policy.Footnote 13 Work by Yngve Nilsen, Helge Ryggvik and Berit Kristoffersen, Øyvind Ihlen, Anne Karin Sæther, and Ada Nissen also demonstrates, in different ways, how the Norwegian oil–industrial complex has shaped climate policy and the approach to renewable energy development.Footnote 14
On the matter of oil companies’ roles in climate and energy transitions more broadly, this article is indebted to work within political science, management, and business studies. Of importance is research by Ernest A. Lowe and Robert J. Harris on BP’s solar investment, Ian H. Rowlands on BP and Exxon’s positions on climate change, Ans Kolk and David Levy on corporate strategies on emissions and renewable investments, Jon Birger Skjærseth and Tora Skodvin on the role of domestic politics in climate strategies, Sybille Van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel and H-C. de Bettignies on the gap between corporate discourse and action, and Minjia Zhong and Morgan D. Bazilian on international oil and gas companies’ investments in renewable energy, revealing a mixed record of success.Footnote 15 Finally, a recent study by Abel Martinez and Gregorio Iglesias on the levelized costs of floating offshore wind in the European Atlantic has informed the analysis. This study clearly shows that Norway’s deep waters and long distances to shore are suboptimal for both floating and bottom-fixed offshore wind.Footnote 16
With respect to the Norwegian context specifically, two articles by Normann stand out for tracing the political dynamics of Norwegian offshore wind, presenting them as a rise-and-decline narrative ending in 2016.Footnote 17 However, shifts in energy economics occur fast. The period after 2016 remains underexplored—an issue this article seeks to address. In addition, work by Tuuka Mäkitie, Håkon Normann, Mari Thune, and Jakoba Gonzales on investment shifts by Norwegian oil companies under varying economic and institutional conditions, and by Mäkitie on the business dimension of three unnamed Norwegian oil companies moving into offshore wind, offer valuable insights on investment patterns. Even so, these two studies do not discuss political aspects and thus leave room open for this article’s interlinkage of political and corporate aspects.Footnote 18
The Birth of a Floating Turbine: Technological Optimism in the 1990s and 2000s
In the late 1990s, wind energy support programs and the construction of onshore windfarms were on the rise in Europe. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio had stressed the need to develop renewable energy sources, and the EU affirmed its commitment to increase the contribution from renewables. Countries such as Denmark, Germany, France, and the UK launched programs with targets for energy production generated by wind power, and by 1995 Europe had overtaken the wind capacity of the US. The focus was on onshore projects, but the world’s first offshore windfarm had been erected in Denmark in 1991, with eleven 450 kW turbines.Footnote 19 In 1990, the Danish government had introduced a national energy plan to cut CO2 emissions by 20% and energy use by 15% by 2005 (from 1988 levels). Inspired by the 1987 UN report Our Common Future, the plan aimed for wind to supply 10% of electricity consumption by 2005. By 1996, Danish producers held nearly 60% of the global turbine market. That year, a new Danish energy plan doubled ambitions, targeting 5500 MW of wind power by 2030, of which 4000 MW was to be installed offshore.Footnote 20
On a world basis, the offshore wind industry was expected to grow, and the appeal of offshore wind was evident for several reasons. The wind resource was more robust and consistent owing to the lack of land interference, and the larger available areas allowed for the deployment of larger turbines and higher-capacity wind farms. Offshore wind projects offered the potential for combined utilization of wind and wave energy, and the environmental and political impacts were generally less significant compared with onshore wind.Footnote 21 In 2000, the first large-scale bottom-fixed offshore farm, Middelgrunden, opened off the coast of Copenhagen, followed by two more in 2002–2003 as part of five planned farms. These projects positioned Denmark as a leader in offshore wind and a “green frontrunner.” Then followed a stagnation as a right-wing government elected in 2001 canceled three of the planned farms, before a 2007 shift in Minister of Climate and Energy revived growth. By 2012, wind power supplied 30% of the total Danish electricity consumption.Footnote 22 In Germany, offshore wind emerged on the scene in 2002, when the German government—motivated by a desire for energy independence and public pressure for addressing climate change—released a strategy paper that aimed to expand large-scale offshore capacity to increase the segment of renewables in the energy mix.Footnote 23 Since environmental laws restricted offshore wind to Germany’s Exclusive Economic Zone, German offshore projects required deeper, more distant sites than in Denmark. This spurred turbine innovation and government-backed research and development (R&D) programs. German offshore expansion slowed after the 2008 financial crisis but regained momentum with the 2010 Energy Concept, a long-term strategy outlining the path to a low-carbon energy system, and a 2011 decision to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.Footnote 24
While Norway, at the time, was far from matching the wind power plans and investments of Denmark and Germany, the sector began to gain traction in the 2000s. In 1998, a government-appointed committee submitted a report on the energy and power balance in Norway, and in 2000 a white paper based on this report was presented to the Parliament.Footnote 25 The white paper assured that Norway aimed to follow up on the commitments made in the Rio Conventions and the Kyoto Protocol and emphasized the need to stimulate development of renewable energy sources through an extensive development program. Onshore wind power was among the renewable sources considered to have the best potential for profitable production, and the goal was to expand by 3 TWh per year until 2010.Footnote 26
Offshore wind projects, on the other hand, were not considered. Sea depths and complex geological formations off the Norwegian coast made installation of bottom-fixed turbines very expensive, as well as technologically and logistically challenging. In most parts of the Norwegian North Sea, the sea depth exceeded 60 meters, leaving development of floating turbines the only real alternative.Footnote 27 But how could one construct functional floating turbines for a rough sea with unstable and stormy wind conditions? In 2001, engineers from the energy company Hydro had a groundbreaking idea almost by accident during a sailing regatta in the Fiord of Oslo. An engineer looked at a floating marker buoy and thought “if we just made one of those 100 meters high instead of four meters, we’d have a tower for a wind turbine.”Footnote 28 With a colleague, he collected data from the Frigg oil field in the North Sea, and with support from the supply company Aker Solutions, the Hydro engineers, alongside computational researchers, advanced what became known as the Hywind turbine toward its final prototype stage. The turbine was based on a spar buoy design, a long hollow cylinder that extended downward from the turbine tower. This construction, which bore resemblance to an iceberg with most of the facility located beneath the surface, had been used by the oil industry for years in offshore operations, for example, for floating platforms.
The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) licensed the Hywind demo facility, and in 2007, offshore wind was mentioned in a white paper on climate policy for the first time. The paper proposed a demonstration program for offshore renewables technology, emphasizing wind power as the most promising clean energy source for powering offshore oil and gas facilities. It also highlighted offshore wind’s relevance in mitigating conflicts over the environmental impact of land-based wind farms.Footnote 29 For the engineers working on Hywind, this political strategy was perfectly timed, and in 2007, the demo facility was granted 59 million Norwegian kroner by Enova—a state enterprise established to promote Norway’s shift toward more environmentally friendly energy production and consumption. Still, 59 million was only about one-tenth of the total costs of constructing and testing the turbine.
The same year as the NVE licensed the Hywind demo, Statoil acquired Hydro’s oil and gas division, taking over both Hywind and Hydro’s 50% stake in the UK-based wind power group Scira, licensed to develop the Sheringham Shoal wind park off the British coast.Footnote 30 Compared with Hydro and other European oil majors, Statoil had been relatively slow with renewables investments. Its limited 1990s investments in bio pellets and biofuels were unprofitable and minor in decarbonization terms.Footnote 31 By contrast, BP had been in solar since the mid-1980s, and Shell had invested in solar, forestry, and biofuels, albeit with mixed success. Owing to cost concerns, BP and Shell gradually divested from solar in the late 2000s, with Shell shifting focus to wind.Footnote 32
Statoil, for its part, increased its concentration on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the 2000s. This was a technology the company had developed and used in the world’s first commercial-scale CCS project at the Sleipner field since 1996 and refined in the years after. This project stemmed from growing international pressure for oil companies to cut operational emissions and a 1991 government-imposed carbon tax on petroleum operations, raising annual corporate CO2 emission costs.Footnote 33 For partly the same reasons, Statoil also began to show interest in wind, following a trend in the mid-2000s where several Norwegian energy companies, state owned and private ones, invested in research and development of offshore wind.
Some international companies also directed attention to offshore wind power development off Norway. Shell invested, for example, 1.4 million EUR in a research project with the Norwegian Research Council, the state-owned hydropower company Statkraft and the energy and telecommunications company Lyse Energi. The plan was to develop a floating wind concept for deep waters built by the company Sway, using a different anchoring system than Hywind. Shortly before Statoil absorbed Hydro’s oil and gas division and took over Hywind in 2007, it invested 19 million EUR in Sway alongside Lyse Energi, the renewables company Scatec, and shipyard and oil industry supplier Rosenberg Verft. Statoil also invested in ChapDrive, a tech company from the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim (NTNU), which developed hydraulic power transfer systems for wind and tidal turbines.Footnote 34
Sway and ChapDrive were Statoil’s first direct investments in wind power technology. The investments reflected what had been a three-pronged strategy among leading European oil companies since they endorsed the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s: support for the reduction of greenhouse gases, commitment to lower emissions from own operations, and development of clean energy technology. Of the two floating turbines (Sway and Hywind), the Hywind spar buoy floating foundations developed by Hydro were reckoned as the most promising, with great future possibilities to supply oil and gas installations with green power, and reduce money spent on carbon taxes. Statoil’s calculations indicated that, in the relatively near future, offshore wind could probably compete with gas and coal production implemented with carbon capture and storage technologies.Footnote 35 From 2007 onward, further development of the Hywind technology therefore became a priority for the company together with CCS solutions.Footnote 36
However, while wind power technology and research investments were low risk, large-scale offshore wind projects carried much greater commercial and political risks. Despite political enthusiasm for Hywind and Sway, Norwegian governments showed limited political willingness in the early to mid-2000s to prioritize commercial-scale projects. This was mainly due to the high costs of subsidizing offshore wind in deep waters requiring costly floating platforms. Thus, the political momentum focused on technology development rather than commercial production.Footnote 37 Companies that invested in technology development were also hesitant about the commercial potential. The lack of a domestic wind market left them without a testing ground, and few incentives to plan for commercial production.
Historically, the focus on technology development reflects long-standing ideas about research-driven industry in Norway. After World War II, clear elements of technology as ideology could be observed within Norwegian industrial policy, stemming from both government and a research milieu centered around a research council at NTNU, and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). Simply put, the idea was that innovation should flow from research to industry, even if it did not align with existing industrial conditions. Both Hydro and later Statoil were closely tied to this system. However, in the 1950s–1970s, this technology-optimistic approach led to several failed government-funded initiatives, such as the building of a Norwegian nuclear industry, automation of existing industries, and a major restructuring of the Norwegian electronics industry. The explanations that historians have given for the failures are complex, but a key issue appears to have been a mismatch between political ambitions and the economic and institutional industrial realities.Footnote 38 Although the post-1990s period obviously differed from the post-war era, grants for Hywind and Sway reflected a similar pattern where technology development was subsidized despite the lack of a domestic wind market and limited international competition prospects. The following sections explore this dynamic and its ties to the oil–industrial complex.
Norway as “the Green Battery of Europe”: Climate Ambitions and Conflicting Pressures
In the mid-2000s, both international and domestic developments pushed for increased production of renewable energy. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth assessment report (2007), documenting rapid human-induced climate change and urging a global energy transition.Footnote 39 In Norway, the already mentioned 2007 white paper on climate policy, which highlighted the development of offshore wind turbines for the first time, set targets to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2020 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Despite challenges such as unpredictable North Sea winds, costly floating turbines for deep waters, a lack of a domestic wind market, and the absence of a legal framework for licensing wind projects to power offshore oil fields, the white paper emphasized the huge potential for renewable energy production on the Norwegian continental shelf and a promising international market where Norwegian wind power technology could become “the winner.”Footnote 40 This optimistic approach relied on an idea that Norway’s supply industry could leverage existing expertise to produce turbines, drawing on parallels with past innovations such as floating platforms and subsea technology.Footnote 41 In this sense, the approach was a political nod to the supply and shipyard industries, recognizing the need to sustain them in a renewable future where the oil industry adapted to new climate goals and regulations.
As in other countries, climate policy was gaining traction in Norway. In 2008, all political parties, except the far-right Progress Party, signed a Climate Agreement focused on a long-term strategy with emphasis on cost-efficiency in the electricity market and technology development.Footnote 42 In the Ministry of Oil and Energy, Minister Åslaug Haga (Center Party) became a driving force for offshore wind power development together with a parliamentary opposition pressing for more renewable energy production. As documented by Normann, Haga established an Energy Council and promptly commissioned a report on Norway’s offshore wind potential. This report concluded that “[t]he opportunities and development direction for offshore wind power appear to be clearly moving toward offshore wind power as an interesting national initiative.”Footnote 43 However, the Energy Council noted that other countries had gained a lead in offshore wind power development and urged Norway to enter the technological race before it was too late. To achieve this, the council recommended a strategic pilot project, a public support scheme, new legislation, the development of bilateral export agreements, and collaboration with other Nordic countries and the EU for financing and infrastructure.Footnote 44
The council’s report gave the Minister of Oil and Energy an impetus to begin promoting Norway as “Europe’s green battery,” advocating for offshore wind as a key solution to emission reduction and clean energy production. Even though the wind enthusiast Haga’s stint in the Ministry of Oil was short-lived, the cross-political climate agreement resulted in the establishment of no fewer than eight centers for environmentally friendly energy research. These were established in 2009, with two specifically focused on offshore wind: NORCOWE and NOWITECH. Haga’s successor, Terje Riis-Johansen (Center Party), initiated new legislation for renewable energy production offshore, and in 2009, the Storting passed a law [Havenergilova] which secured necessary regulation for offshore wind.Footnote 45 When oil prices dropped the same year owing to a collapse in demand caused by the 2008 financial crisis, a slowdown in Norway’s petroleum industry reinforced the arguments for offshore wind investments. The downturn prompted layoffs in the supply industry and led the government to encourage supply companies to establish capabilities to support the assembly, transportation, and installation of wind turbines, as well as the production of some subsea structures that support the tower and turbine topside.Footnote 46
As mentioned initially, Norway’s oil–industrial complex is characterized by a strong presence of both employer and employee interests. An important actor is the Confederation of Trade Unions’ (LO), which has been, and is, particularly concerned with jobs in the supply industry. The Confederation has stressed the need to maintain and advance supply sector competence, also during economic downturns. Thus, the LO was positive toward redeployment into wind turbine component production and harbor accommodation for turbines when oil prices dropped, and called for national plans to utilize wind resources and identify suitable development areas. In addition, the Confederation urged the state-owned Statoil to pursue more wind power projects in Norway.Footnote 47 However, the LO consistently emphasized that climate efforts or investments in renewables should not negatively impact jobs in the oil sector.
Both the LO and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) have played key roles in shaping strategies to maintain the competitiveness of the Norwegian continental shelf, reflecting the Nordic model of tripartite cooperation between government, employers, and unions. Since the early 2000s, major labor, business, and oil industry actors have collaborated through a body called KonKraft, a successor to NorSok, an organ established by the Ministry of Oil and Energy in 1993 to secure the competitive position of the Norwegian continental shelf in international context. KonKraft is a collaboration between various stakeholders in the petroleum industry and the government and aims to boost productivity via better framework conditions (taxes), work processes, technology, internationalization, and skills development, especially in the supply industry.Footnote 48
KonKraft was initially overseen by an Executive Forum led by the Oil and Energy Minister, with other ministers often invited to discussions impacting their policy areas. Over time, however, the government presence declined, and KonKraft evolved into a lobbying alliance, driven by a strong LO–NHO axis. Its top council included, and still includes, leaders from LO, NHO, Offshore Norge (an employer and interest organization for companies operating on the Norwegian continental shelf), Equinor, and major industry firms such as Aker Solutions.Footnote 49 Still closely tied to politics, the alliance has often outpaced parties in shaping oil and climate policy. Thus, after the 2009 oil price drop, KonKraft mobilized to protect supply industry jobs, including by promoting redeployment into turbine component production.
Yet, the view on the opportunities of offshore wind was by no means unanimous in politics and bureaucracy. In her memoir from 2012, the previous Minister of Oil and Energy Åslaug Haga explained how her renewables plans were counteracted by strong oil-oriented forces in politics and the civil service.Footnote 50 As Haga moved on to become head of the Norwegian Wind Energy Association (NORWEA), she reiterated the same message. In 2021, during a parliamentary hearing on the 2013 decision to open the disputed Barent’s Sea for oil drilling, she explained that there was an “iron triangle” consisting of economists working in the Ministry of Oil and Energy, the Ministry of Finance, and the Prime Minister’s Office—occupied by the economist Jens Stoltenberg, which unanimously prioritized oil and gas.Footnote 51 Haga also pointed to the problematic revolving doors between Statoil/Equinor and the Oil Ministry, a phenomenon which has been documented in research on the oil industry’s influence on climate policy.Footnote 52
This observation reflects how, since the early 1990s, both renewable and climate policy in Norway have been subordinate to petroleum policy. While environmental and climate matters have been handled by a separate ministry, energy policy has remained under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy since 1978, embedding renewables (hydro and wind power) within the same institutional framework as oil and gas. This dual mandate has at times generated tensions over policy priorities. Additionally, the Ministry of Finance, functioning as a “supraministry” with coordinating authority, has played a key role in aligning climate policy with the economic logic of petroleum governance.Footnote 53 The common denominator in this political setup was that economists with experience in oil and energy dominated the civil service in the central institutions dealing with energy issues, fostering a shared understanding of the main climate-related challenges and appropriate policy responses. This setup separated oil and climate policy, treating renewables as an intermediate area, often blurring the lines between industrial, energy, and climate policy, for both contemporary politicians and historians analyzing developments in retrospect.
Since the 1990s, interests represented in KonKraft have aligned with perspectives put forward by economists in the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Oil and Energy, Statistics Norway, and research institutes such as the Centre for International Climate and Energy Research Oslo (CICERO) in oil and climate policy-making processes. These actors have, often for economically valid reasons, supported cost-efficient climate measures that permit continued oil production, while voicing concerns about the expense and inefficiency of renewables.Footnote 54 At times, these views have clashed with those of key politicians, such as Haga’s frustration over offshore wind’s demotion. Yet they have often aligned with dominant positions in major political parties, especially the Conservative and Labor parties. In this sense, there is merit to the case that Norway’s access to oil and hydropower with clearly lower energy cost has hindered renewables development. A recent study by the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research (TØI) comparing Norway and Sweden’s attitudes toward renewable energy from 1960 to 2015 supports this claim. The study shows that, despite similar energy policies, Sweden pursued a more ambitious renewable strategy with higher wind and solar production, mainly because it lost access to cheap hydropower after 1970, unlike Norway.Footnote 55
Another significant issue influencing Norwegian energy policy priorities was a major debate between the late 1980s and the early 2000s over building domestic gas-fired power plants with high CO2 emissions. Driven by concerns over power shortages in dry years and a desire to stimulate industrial activity, the issue unfolded at the intersection of industrial policy, energy security, and climate change, with environmentalists and the oil industry at opposing ends. Throughout the 1990s, several power plants were delayed or halted amid political controversy, culminating in the fall of the Bondevik I government in 2000 over a proposal to allow plants without CO2 capture. The debate resurfaced with Statoil’s plan to power its Mongstad refinery with gas, leading the Stoltenberg II government in 2007 to launch a full-scale carbon capture project, hailed as a “moon landing” by the Prime Minister. The project was later abandoned owing to high costs and technical issues, becoming instead a symbol of the difficulty of implementing ambitious large-scale climate technology in a petroleum economy.Footnote 56
Even though offshore wind was never framed as something as radical as a “moon landing,” advocates indeed promoted it as an industrial opportunity and a key step toward a greener economy, captured in the vision of Norway as Europe’s “green battery.” However, the physical conditions on the Norwegian continental shelf imposed some significant constraints on the potential for development. Despite studies commissioned by the state-owned Enova in the late 2000s, highlighting the enormous potential of offshore wind, the physical conditions off the Norwegian coast indicated that offshore wind production was a suboptimal renewables strategy.Footnote 57 In a study of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a wind turbine in the European Atlantic over its lifetime, Martinez and Iglesias’ clearly show that the areas off the Norwegian coast have higher levelized costs than areas off Great Britain, Ireland, northern Germany, and western Denmark, as well as areas northwest off the Iberian Peninsula. The only places with worse conditions for profitable floating offshore wind power than Norway are the Gulf of Biscay and areas south of the Iberian Peninsula.Footnote 58
In the 2000s, however, detailed knowledge such as that presented by Martinez and Iglesias was not available. Offshore wind was in its infancy, and precise data for calculations of its levelized costs could not be collected. This lack of information contributed to a techno-optimistic mindset among politicians and researchers outside the oil economist “iron triangle” described by Haga, where offshore wind power, particularly Hywind technology, was seen as having “staggering potential.”Footnote 59 Particularly energy and technology researchers began to describe offshore wind power as “a new industrial adventure,” drawing a parallel to the term “oil adventure” often used to describe Norway’s rise as an oil nation.Footnote 60
Within the oil companies, there were also a few strong advocates for offshore wind, but they faced internal resistance. One of them was Alexandra Bech Gjørv, who became Statoil’s Director of New Energy after the 2007 Statoil–Hydro merger. Gjørv came from Hydro, where optimism about offshore wind was stronger, and argued that four Hywind-equipped blocks “would have the potential to supply all of Norway with power indefinitely.”Footnote 61 Her superior in Statoil, Margareth Øvrum, Executive Vice President for Technology and New Energy, supported the development of a wind energy portfolio, but received internal criticism for both not accelerating renewable investments and diverting funds from more profitable oil and gas projects.Footnote 62 Even so, by 2009, Statoil had invested NOK 400 million in a full-scale Hywind pilot and joined two major UK wind projects, benefiting from a more mature wind market and better financial conditions than in Norway. One of these projects was Dogger Bank, a shallow area in the British North Sea, planned jointly with other companies, including the state-owned hydropower company Statkraft. Dogger Bank was expected to be much larger than Sheringham Shoal, the bottom-fixed park inherited from Hydro after the 2007 merger, and set to be Statoil’s first significant operational offshore wind project.Footnote 63 Yet, while these projects signaled an internal prioritization of wind, Statoil’s top management sent a parallel and opposing message as it decided to exclude the New Energy unit from its executive committee, reflecting its generally low priority given to renewables.Footnote 64
A Cancelled Wind Party? Economic Realities and Questions of Cost
The period between 2010 and 2012 saw a general decline in offshore wind power development in Norway, which once again made it clear that Norwegian energy policy pivoted around oil.Footnote 65 After the drop in 2009, oil prices rose again, and the supply companies turned their attention to the upstream companies. On the political side, Haga’s party fellow, the oil enthusiast Ola Borten Moe, was appointed Minister of Oil and Energy, leaving the government with no prominent spokesperson for offshore wind. “Borten Moe has cancelled the offshore wind party,” the press reported.Footnote 66 “There’s no point for me in spending billions of tax kroners to build an offshore wind farm,” Borten Moe argued and referred to the low, short-term profitability prospects for offshore wind on the continental shelf.Footnote 67 This attitude was reinforced when Statoil made a significant oil discovery in the Barent’s Sea, which reduced prospects for layoffs and removed the supply industry’s incentive for redeployment into turbine component production.
Still, Borten Moe wanted Norway to continue to develop offshore wind technology. But what was the point in developing technology that could not be tested in a home market? To counter this structural barrier, offshore wind investors other than the oil companies tried to tie offshore wind to industrial decline and make the government support demonstration projects. Two such projects were Demo2020 and Demo Rogaland, with Statoil as one of the partners in the latter.Footnote 68 However, as demonstrated by Normann, political support for more cost-efficient energy policies dominated, and grants for offshore wind projects diminished.Footnote 69
This development was reinforced when it became clear that offshore wind was poorly suited to what had been launched as a green certificate scheme, a joint Norwegian–Swedish support system launched in 2012 after years of political debate. The scheme awarded certificates per unit of renewable energy produced, which could be sold to meet renewable quotas. Although promising in theory, a study by the research institute SINTEF found green certificates insufficient to incentivize investments in offshore wind, given the technology’s high costs compared with many alternatives. Green certificates also created more income uncertainty than feed-in tariffs, which guaranteed fixed above-market prices for renewable power fed into the grid.Footnote 70
As a result of the suboptimal financial conditions in Norway, Statoil directed most of its offshore wind investments to the UK, where support schemes and the wind energy market were more favorable. Statoil already had strong connections with British authorities through its role as a key supplier of natural gas to the UK market, and the EU’s emphasis on energy security and diversification further encouraged its wind investments.Footnote 71 In 2011, Sheringham Shoal began operations, followed by Statoil and Statkraft’s acquisition of the UK-based Dudgeon project, with Statoil holding 70%. Around the same time, Statoil explored a floating Hywind farm, initially planned for Norway but facing competition from Scotland and the US. The foreign interest in the farm triggered protests in Norway: the Karmøy Hywind test center on the southwest coast wanted the project to be realized locally, while the employer’s association Norsk Industri, a member of KonKraft, criticized the government’s weak financial support framework. In Parliament, the oppositional Liberal Party warned that expertise and capital might move abroad, reflecting Norway’s historical tradition of using state-owned companies to safeguard national interests such as industrial development and employment.Footnote 72
However, the Norwegian state was unwilling to offer the funds necessary to compete with Scotland or the US. Although the Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) had identified 15 suitable offshore wind areas in the Norwegian North Sea, the government refused the subsidy schemes that Statoil considered reasonable for the Hywind farm, reasoning that even bottom-fixed farms elsewhere in Europe struggled to be profitable.Footnote 73 As a result, the company decided to go for Scotland. Statoil’s turn to the UK coincided with a general reduction in offshore wind activity for Norwegian oil and gas companies between 2011 and 2014. Mäkitie, Normann, Thune, and Gonzales observe that the oil and gas companies’ interest in wind rose during downturns in the oil market and declined when oil prices recovered again. In 2014, a sharp drop in prices triggered renewed investment, reaching a peak in 2015. This wave overlapped with a European surge in offshore wind installations, signaling market maturity, as well as a reduction in perceived risk for oil companies investing in the European wind market.Footnote 74
In Statoil, this trend manifested in several developments. The company established a New Energy unit in 2015, consolidating offshore wind, CCS, and research capabilities, with increased funding. In 2016, it doubled the staff in the unit while cutting elsewhere owing to the 2014 oil price drop. That year, Statoil also launched a USD 200 million renewables venture fund, making four relatively large renewables investments. By 2015, Hywind turbine construction costs had dropped 60–70% from the demo, and in 2017, construction of fundaments for the turbines to be raised in Scotland began in Spain. Assembly of the turbines was moved to Stord, Norway, to mitigate criticism of relocating jobs abroad.Footnote 75 Statoil then sold 25% of Hywind Scotland to Masdar, an Emirati state-owned renewable energy company, and launched the world’s first full-scale Hywind wind farm.
With this, Statoil controlled 2 GW of wind generation capacity in Europe and the US. A strong incentive for these investments was a combination of reputational considerations and the company’s own increasingly ambitious emission reduction targets. Insights from the company’s annual and sustainability reports reveal a growing focus on offshore wind, with the term appearing 5 times in the 2010 sustainability report and 24 times in the annual report, rising steadily to 90 and 83 mentions in the reports of 2022 and 2023.Footnote 76 Internationally, Boon notes, Statoil stood out for focusing on development of floating wind technology, as most oil companies prioritized power generation over innovation.Footnote 77
From a European perspective, though, Norwegian wind power development was still lagging behind. Contrary to the 2008 recommendations of the government-appointed Energy Council, the contributions of Norwegian industries and energy companies to offshore wind power development occurred abroad. Around 2016, there were 81 operational offshore wind farms in Europe with a capacity of 12,631 MW. The UK had the largest capacity with 40.8%, followed by Germany at 32.5%, Denmark with 10.1%, the Netherlands (8.8%), and Belgium (5.6%). In comparison, Norway’s capacity was still only 0.02%.Footnote 78
Rebranding and a Joint Push for the North Sea: The Importance of Global Fluctuations
Statoil appeared committed to expanding its wind portfolio. In 2018, it rebranded as Equinor in an effort to shift its identity toward renewable energy, with a particular focus on offshore wind. This change aligned with a broader trend among major oil companies. As demonstrated by Boon, the oil industry’s common response to increased scrutiny following new climate regulations was to introduce diversification strategies and adopt the climate discourse while maintaining their oil and gas business models. This trend began with European companies such as BP, Shell, and Total making voluntary net-zero pledges, then quickly spreading across the industry, eventually reaching the more climate-skeptical American companies.Footnote 79
By 2019, Equinor had worked on floating offshore wind for almost 20 years and was gradually developing a Norwegian wind portfolio. “We are working on a transition where we aim to preserve and develop the value of the Norwegian continental shelf while simultaneously reducing the climate footprint of our operations,” Equinor’s Executive Vice President for Development and Production on the Norwegian continental shelf explained.Footnote 80 However, Equinor’s Norwegian wind portfolio differed from its UK portfolio, as the turbines it installed were intended not to supply the electricity market, but to reduce gas turbine use on the company’s own oil fields. For this to work, it was essential that the government had allowed the company to extend the lifespan of some of its fields, most crucially the Gullfaks field to 2036 and the Snorre field to 2040, up to 20 years beyond original plans. This enabled Equinor to invest in a new floating wind farm connected to the fields: Hywind Tampen. Hywind Tampen was expected to cut CO2 emissions by over 200,000 tonnes annually, supporting both government climate targets and Equinor’s own “Climate Roadmap” aiming to halve the carbon net intensity of the energy it produced by 2050.Footnote 81
Electrification of the Norwegian continental shelf has been a recurring point of contention at the intersection of domestic climate and energy policy debate. Supplying offshore fossil fuel installations with mainland electricity to cut emissions has drawn criticism for favoring oil and gas over local energy needs and a genuine green shift. It raises domestic power demand, requires grid upgrades, and strains the supply–demand balance, pushing electricity prices up. While offshore wind avoids these grid impacts and price rises for consumers, projects such as Hywind Tampen rely heavily on public subsidies, fueling concerns that they too are prolonging fossil production rather than advancing a broader energy transition.
Still, greening the oil production on the continental shelf has remained central to Norwegian emissions reduction. For the government, Equinor has been an important ally in its plan to electrify installations, implement CCS, and harness wind power. A white paper on energy policy from 2016 recognized that the Norwegian petroleum-dependent economy needed to diversify. By 2018, domestic demand for power was increasing and new calculations from the NVE showed that the costs of offshore wind had decreased quicker than assumed.Footnote 82 Thus, before long, the canceled offshore wind party was on again.
In 2020, a Conservative government, aiming to make Norway a renewable energy leader, opened applications for new offshore wind projects in the two areas of Utsira Nord and Sørlige Nordsjø II.Footnote 83 This was a critical step toward expanding Norway’s offshore wind capabilities and signaled stronger governmental support. Yet, Norway remained an oil nation. The most evident sign of this came when oil prices fell owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the supply industry, with help from the law firm BAHR, and Aker BP, sounded the alarm and proposed immediate industry tax cuts. The proposal, backed by KonKraft, LO, and NHO, led to a generous tax package introduced by the conservative Solberg government with support from the Labor Party. The move drew sharp criticism for making unprofitable oil projects lucrative, contradicting climate goals and the Paris Agreement, and delaying investment in renewable energy, including offshore wind.Footnote 84
Despite the COVID-induced oil tax package, the Labor Party’s return to power in 2021 was accompanied by continued optimism that offshore wind component production and supply services would drive job creation and value generation. Fornybar Norge, an interest and employer organization for the entire renewable energy sector, led by the wind enthusiast and previous Minister of Oil and Energy, Åslaug Haga, declared that offshore wind could “secure Norway’s position as an energy superpower even after the green transition” and that the supply industry could “capture a significant share of the global market for designing and constructing floating offshore wind farms,” which would become a “new export success story.”Footnote 85 The more sober NVE also maintained the view that a large-scale offshore wind power expansion in Norway could generate significant employment and value-creation effects.Footnote 86
On the opposing side, KonKraft, comprising Equinor, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), and the Labor Party-aligned Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), demanded government framework conditions to sustain high oil activity. While agreeing on emission cuts and increased renewable energy production, KonKraft insisted that this must not harm the oil industry. Thus, the new Labor government pledged in its platform to protect the oil sector, stating that the green transition would build on its foundation. Simultaneously, it shifted from a “neutral” to a more “active industrial policy” to meet Paris Agreement goals and cut emissions with 55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. In concrete terms, this policy entailed more active use of state measures to reach climate goals and expand renewable energy production, including offshore wind.Footnote 87
And indeed, offshore wind power development in the North Sea was expanding. In 2022 Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium agreed to quadruple the area’s offshore wind capacity to at least 150 GW by 2050. The same year, Norway’s government announced a large-scale offshore wind initiative, aiming to allocate areas for 30,000 MW of offshore wind energy by 2024. According to the government, this was a “milestone in Norwegian industrial and energy history” that would turn the country into “a wind power nation.” The goal was to develop 30,000 MW of offshore wind, roughly equal to Norway’s entire power system, to supply both domestic and European markets. Since the Norwegian grid could not absorb that volume, much of the electricity would be exported via new two-way cables with radial connections to Norway and Europe. Offshore wind would also help power petroleum installations.Footnote 88
At this point, a contentious conflict over onshore wind had developed in mid-Norway. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s license for wind power development in Fosen was invalid owing to a violation of Sami rights under Article 27 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.Footnote 89 This experience further strengthened the political notion that offshore wind was by far the best alternative for renewable energy production in Norway.
Accordingly, in 2022, the government launched a private–public offshore wind export reform to help Norwegian actors capture more of the global market, presenting offshore wind as Norway’s “new export adventure.”Footnote 90 In 2023, Norway joined the UK, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium in a declaration to make the North Sea “Europe’s Green Power Plant,” setting targets of 120 GW offshore wind capacity by 2030 and at least 300 GW by 2050.Footnote 91 Also in pursuing this goal, Equinor was an important partner to the government. As mentioned above, the company had opened Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest floating wind farm, making it responsible for 47% of the world’s offshore floating wind capacity. Marked by optimism, Equinor, whose renewables portfolio still accounted for only around 0.4% of its activity, declared that Norway’s offshore wind fairy tale had officially begun, and that 2023 was to offshore wind what the 1970s had been to oil.Footnote 92
Despite uncertainty over high costs and supply bottlenecks, particularly in turbine manufacturing, the Labor-led government managed to conclude the first offshore wind auction in Sørlige Nordsjø II in March 2024. However, the prevailing optimism and the successful auction could not offset the fact that the global offshore wind industry was facing a downturn owing to rising costs, shrinking profits, and supply chain issues. By the end of 2024, it became clear that the challenges in the offshore wind sector steered Equinor away from further expansion. Amid the UN Climate Change Conference COP29, the company announced a 20% reduction in its Renewable Energy division, closing offshore wind projects in several countries and eliminating 250 full-time positions, reassigning most affected employees to oil and gas projects. A few months later, the government-commissioned Fiscal Policy Committee recommended Norway to pause its floating offshore wind initiatives because they were not economically viable.Footnote 93
Conclusion
Norway’s turn toward offshore wind power and the oil and gas sector’s redeployment into this energy source from the late 1990s onward may at first glance seem like the start of a flexible industrial policy where the state, labor, and capital have worked together to address shared climate- and energy-related challenges. However, the development of a Norwegian offshore wind policy has been politically inconsistent, nonstrategic, and shaped by both oil price fluctuations and instability in the offshore wind industry, as well as conflicting political forces that have often undermined each other. Efforts to promote Norway as “the green battery of Europe” and a “wind power nation” have faced challenges from suboptimal offshore conditions, high costs, and the absence of a functional domestic wind market. Resistance from oil interests, especially KonKraft and parts of the civil service, have further complicated offshore wind power development.
To overcome these challenges, the experience and expertise of a globally leading offshore oil industry have been highlighted as the fertile ground on which the wind power industry would grow and bloom as a “new industrial adventure,” echoing the rise of the oil industry in the 1970s. While governmental Norway has backed the development of offshore wind technology, it has relied on oil companies to shoulder the investment burden. The oil companies have had a vested interest in offshore wind, using it to meet climate targets and position themselves for the future energy market while staying committed to fossil fuels. However, their focus on foreign markets has reflected doubts about wind power’s viability in the Norwegian North Sea, underscoring a key argument of this article: the disconnect between high-flying and often vague political ambitions, and industrial realities. Eventually, though, extensive public support schemes have been introduced to support the development of commercial-scale projects, despite growing awareness of poor geological conditions and weak cost estimates.
The distinctiveness of the Norwegian case does not lie in the oil companies’ investments in offshore wind, as similar moves have been undertaken by other international oil majors. Nor is it unusual that oil companies’ renewables portfolios remain modest. Generally, oil companies have few incentives to redeploy into alternative industries as long as fossil fuel extraction continues to yield substantially higher returns. Norway’s trajectory in offshore wind largely reflects this global tendency. What is more distinctive in the Norwegian case is the tension between an oil-dependent economy and ambitious climate policies. This Janus-faced reality nurtured the narrative that offshore wind could grow organically from the oil sector, with floating turbines portrayed as “the new oil.”
In conclusion, offshore wind in Norway has been driven forward by a mix of ambitious climate goals, rising domestic energy demand, and hopes of boosting the supply industry and securing jobs. Conflicts over onshore wind and the 2021 Supreme Court ruling on Sami rights have further steered politicians offshore. Offshore wind has served as a political lightning rod, as politicians have promoted a narrative of transforming the oil nation into a wind power nation, diverting attention from ongoing oil and gas priorities, economic realities, and potentially more effective climate measures. At the heart of this trajectory we find a fundamental lack of clarity about the overarching strategic and political objectives behind the turn to offshore wind, reflected in shifting policy goals and confusing, intertwined motivations.
Acknowledgements
This article owes much to the foundational archival research conducted by members of the research project Statoil 50 Years, 1972–2022, carried out at the University of Oslo between 2017 and 2022, with contributors ranging from graduate students to senior researchers, among whom the author was also a participant.
Author Biography
Ada Nissen is Associate Professor of History at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History at the University of Oslo. Recent publications include “With statoil as a prism: revisiting key features and concerns in Western oil companies’ evolving human rights awareness, from the mid-1990s to the 2000s,” in Enterprise & Society (2023), and “The Nordic state as a global investor: a reflection on Norway’s ethical stance on investments since 2000,” with Einar Lie in Nordic models in global entanglements, eds. Mary Hilson et al. (2025).
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