A stochastic study of carbon emission reduction from electrification and interconnecting cable utilization. The Norway and Germany case

We analyse how carbon emissions are reduced utilizing the new NordLink cable between Norway and Germany, taking policy plans of platform electrification in Norway into account. Building a stochastic model based on existing data for Norwegian and German electricity production and demand (Open Power system data, 2020) to account for uncertainty, we found that the cable can be used as an effective way to reduce German emissions by exporting German renewable surplus production on windy days to Norway and importing from Norway other days. We found that such flow of power will lead to a possible reduction of the countries’ total emissions by over 4.1 million tons CO2 annually. Based on a mean reduction of German CO2 emissions of about 710 g/kWh by electricity imported from Norway, we found that electrification of the Norwegian oil and gas extraction is inferior to an increased export to Germany in terms of total emission reduction, as electrification only gives a reduction of about 425 g/kWh according to numbers from the Norwegian Oil Directorate (Oljedirektoratet, 2020). A similar calculation assuming a realistic full electrification of the platforms only gave a reduction of 2.4 million tons CO2 annually. In the long term, we conclude that combining both approaches makes the best use of Norwegian surplus energy production in view of carbon emission reduction.