Episode 6 of the Energy and Politics podcast
In May, LUKOIL launched the second phase of the world’s most powerful wind farm in the Arctic – the Kola Wind Power Plant. The first phase of the 170 MW wind farm was put into commercial operation on December 1 last year. After the launch of the second phase, the plant’s capacity exceeded 201 MW.
The Kola wind farm was built in the Kola district of the Murmansk region, not far from the village of Teriberka. Almost 70% of the equipment at the wind farm is Russian-made. The authorities of the Murmansk region hope that the operation of the wind farm will bring billions of rubles in tax revenues to the region’s treasury. RES will help the region solve the problem of energy supply. Once Murmansk hoped for the implementation of the Shtokman gas project in the Barents Sea and gasification of the region, but now renewable energy will help the Arctic region with energy.
Previously, the project belonged to the Italian energy company Enel, but in March last year it announced a phased curtailment of business in the Russian Federation. At the end of September 2022, the Russian authorities approved the conclusion of a deal to sell a stake in the Italian company LUKOIL and the Gazprombank investment fund with a special permit.
LUKOIL began to deal with renewable energy back in 2009, when a corresponding division appeared in the company. At that time, I was working for the Oil of Russia magazine and around that time I wrote the first article on the energy transition and the development of green energy. By 2009, the largest oil and gas corporations in the world (BP, Shell) were already engaged in the development of RES (solar, wind and bioenergy). The magazine was interested in large analytical articles on the development of world oil and gas and energy strategies of different countries, and I went on business trips from a Russian company and wrote texts about energy.
Today I would like to tell you about three people who have defined my worldview regarding the energy transition. First of all, this is Connie Hedegaard, then the Danish Minister of Climate and Energy. She is one of the authors of Denmark’s energy transition to renewable energy. The Scandinavian country has become one of the pioneers in this area. In 2009, industry and environmental journalists were taken around the kingdom and shown offshore wind farms in the North Sea. Even then, the first houses with solar panels on the roof appeared in this country.
In 2010, I witnessed the first Tesla in Norway. In thirteen years, the share of sales of electric vehicles in this country reaches almost 90%. In the same year, Kevin Costner spoke at the oil and gas conference in Stavanger. An actor with a business partner told oil workers how they cleaned oil on their ship in the Gulf of Mexico after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon platform. In 2012, Elon Musk came to Stavanger, and then he seemed like a terrible bore, but now it doesn’t seem so to me anymore. Tesla’s latest Earth Master Plan, unveiled this spring, defines the way forward for the energy transition on the planet.
