The challenges of greening energy: policy/industry dissonance at the Mongstad refinery, Norway

Abstract

The interaction between policy making and industry is a key to understanding the conditions for ‘greening’ contemporary energy systems. This article uses efforts toward greening the Mongstad oil refinery in Norway as a case to analyse the challenges involved in politically stimulated shifts towards increased sustainability in the energy sector. A technology test centre and a full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Mongstad were the centrepiece of the Stoltenberg government's (2005–2013) climate strategy. However, the project suffered delays and cost overruns until the full-scale carbon capture and storage project was eventually stopped. It is argued that interactions between the policy-making and industrial innovation arenas involved in this case are challenging because they operate according to different internal logics. We conceptualize this divergence as ‘policy/industry dissonance’ and suggest that this concept is a useful complement to literatures on regional innovation systems (RIS) and the multilevel perspective on sustainability transitions (MLP).