Norsk Teknisk Museum
Kjelsåsveien 143,
0491 Oslo
Our ref.: 12011/ TVE/Glen Peters Your ref.: Hans Weinberger Date.: October 3 rd , 2014
I recently visited the Teknisk Museum (30/6/2014, 21/9/2014) with my daughter (3 years). It was a great experience, and my daughter loved it. Congratulations on a great museum.
Since I work on climate policy, I was naturally drawn to the oil and gas display and, in particular, the information on Norwegian emissions and climate policy. Here I found several factual errors (most likely innocent mistakes) and a few rather misleading statements.
To make the description easier I include some photos of the information plates in the display area.
Emissions from Norwegian oil and gas: There are several issues with this plate, and the same applies in English and Norwegian:
1.
“Total annual Norwegian petroleum production emits some 500 MtCO
2
” is not quite correct, at least, it is misleading. Emissions from oil and gas sector can be considered in two ways.
First, the emissions to extract oil and gas. Second, the emissions to combust (use) the oil and gas that was extracted.

a.
The emissions in Norway to extract oil and gas was about 14MtCO
2
in 2013 and these emission occur in Norwegian territory. Total Norwegian emissions are about
44MtCO
2
. This can be checked at Statistics Norway: http://ssb.no/en/natur-ogmiljo/statistikker/klimagassn/aar-forelopige/2014-05-
14?fane=tabell&sort=nummer&tabell=177138 b.
Emissions to combust (use) the oil and gas: This is about 500MtCO
2
. It is clear that the 500MtCO
2
is an important number, but the way it is described is misleading. It would have to be worded something like “The oil and gas extracted in Norway leads to about 500MtCO
2
after combusting the oil and gas, with some of those emissions occurring in Norway but most occurring in countries that import Norwegian oil and gas.”
2.
“... or about two-thousands of the worlds combined emissions”. This is actually wrong. Global emissions of CO
2
are about 36,000MtCO
2
in 2013 http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/ and 500MtCO
2
is therefore about 1.5% of global emissions (two thousands would be about 0.2%). As an aside, Norwegian emissions of
CO
2
are about 44MtCO
2
and this is about 0.1% of global emissions (which is about one thousandth of global emissions).
3.
The last paragraph does not reflect the science and this is a highly contentious issue. It is a little unclear what the SSB study refers to. At one point it says reducing Norwegian oil production would reduce emissions, but then it says that this has many uncertainties. Is the text from “a smaller contribution...” from SSB research or the opinion of who wrote the text?
It would be nice to see what reports at SSB are referred to for these statements.
Carbon Capture and Storage : While
Carbon Capture and Storage is a very important technology, this text is highly misleading at best:
1.
“The world needs energy, with coal, oil, and gas as the most important sources”. This is true as of now, but in the modelling scenarios consistent with keeping global temperatures below 2C this is not true.
2.
“Removing carbon emissions from combustion would make a power station fuelled by coal or gas just as environment-friendly as hydropower, wind energy or solar power. A key problem with fossil fuels would vanish.” These sentences are simply incorrect.
They, for example, contradict the
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report
Working Group 3 work in
Chapter 7 (Figure 7.6).
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3.
“Capture is usually done after combustion, CO2 in flue gases is removed with amines or other solvents”. I think this statement is biased by Norwegian experiences at Mongstad. In fact, the first post-combustion demonstration plant was opened officially this week (in Canada)!
While I enjoyed the oil and gas display, and I think this is an important display to have in the Norsk
Teknisk Museum, I am quite disappointed that several factual errors have crept into the text on the environmental consequences of oil and gas production. More concerning is that some of the text is wrong (at best highly misleading), and the text seems to be biased to shining a positive light on the oil and gas industry.
Please feel free to contact me, or my colleagues, if you would like to discuss any of these points further. I am happy to check text if you so happen to revise the text.
Kind regards,
CICERO
Glen Peters
Senior Research Fellow e-mail: Glen.peters@cicero.oslo.no
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