The Ambitious and the Ambivalent: Sweden’s and Norway’s Attitudes Towards Domestic New Renewable Energy Sources

The study investigates why Norway and Sweden from 1960 until 2015 have developed their renewable energy production along very different paths. The results show that politics and public policies have had profound impacts on which type of renewable energy production have been developed, when and how. Sweden, lacking access to new cheap hydropower after 1970, has generally implemented more ambitious and comprehensive policies, leading to much higher production of new renewable energy of all types than in Norway. Differences might thus be explained by differences in: natural resource endowments, long-term research and innovation efforts, combined with creation of markets and predictable policies. Enhanced new renewables production has boosted energy security and stabilized the energy systems in both countries. The Swedish-Norwegian green electric certificate market, until 2015, mainly contributed to expansion of already cost-competitive or nearly cost-competitive technologies: small-scale hydropower in Norway and biopower and wind power in Sweden.