Clean Technica is reporting, even celebrating, the move of Statoil out of it fossil fuel assets in Canada and into offshore wind in the US:
Norway’s state-owned Statoil oil and gas company won the right to develop an offshore wind farm in US waters last week, practically within hours of selling off its tar sands oil assets in Canada. The new wind area is off the coast of New York State, hard by New York City, which makes it a high status, high visibility site for the global energy giant.
Similarly, Sami Grover on Treehugger.com is also excited:
… is about perfectly designed to make my little TreeHugging heart sing: Norwegian oil and energy giant Statoil has spent the end of 2016 selling off its assets in Canadian tar sands, and securing rights to develop a gigantic offshore wind farm off the coast of New York State. …
True, critics will note that Statoil is still involved in an awful lot of dirty energy production and exploration. Still, this is exactly the type of divest-invest move from a major energy player which could bring about a major shift in the economics of energy markets. And once that shift happens, there will be little that can be done to stop it.
But to emphasize the point, Statoil is state-owned by Norway, a country. I stop the sentence there to emphasize the point: Statoil is, to some extent, controlled by an entity which has more than just profit on its mind. More formally, Norway has a responsibility to assure the survival of its citizens in the future.
This is important in that most of the climate change offenders are public companies, such as ExxonMobil, and they are not necessarily concerned about climate change and the environment in general; their shareholders clamor for profits.
So I hesitate to become excited that this may be the start of a sea-change.
It does, however, bring to mind the problems that will occur if & when the sea-change comes: a multitude of workers out of work. Of course, there will be new jobs in the cleaner energy industries, but will there be enough? Will adequate retraining be provided, or do those who worked to provide us with energy just get pushed off the oil platform and told to swim for it?
