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Electrification of offshore oil and gas installations on the Norwegian continental shelf is one of several options to decrease the CO2 emitted from these installations. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding how the increased electricity consumption will influence the CO2 emissions in the power market, both in the short-run and in the long-run. This paper aims to address the issue and investigate the feasibility of the electrification of a large offshore area in the North Sea in comparison to standard concepts to supply energy offshore. A novel integrated model was developed for the purpose that includes and combines a process model of the offshore power generation units and a model of the European power system. The integration of the two models allows to simultaneously simulate the behavior of the offshore energy conversion systems and the effect of electrification on the onshore power system. The outcomes of the analysis show that the environmental performance of electrification is strongly affected by the selected approach to quantify the CO2 emissions associated with power from shore. Taking standard methods to supply offshore energy as basis for comparison, the marginal effect of electrification would result in increased CO2 emissions (+40%), while the average effect would entail large reductions in CO2 emissions (−48% to −90%), the extent of which depends on the geographical scope selected. An analysis on the economics of electrification indicates that its economic viability would be challenging and would not be favoured by a strong European commitment towards environmental policies since the expected increase of power price will outbalance the gains for the reduced emission costs.

This paper addresses the role of Norwegian hydro power to provide balancing power to a future wind dominated European power system. Two power market models, one simplified and one detailed are used to model possible responses of Norwegian hydro power to a wind driven exchange pattern for various amounts of exchange capacity. The case analysed assume a 2030 scenario for wind generation in Europe and an increase in exchange capacity between Norway and Europe from 2300 MW to 5800 MW. We find that the generation constraints and the exchange capacity, and not the aggregated reservoir size, are the most important limiting factors for the amount of balancing the Norwegian hydro power system can provide.

Electrification of transport is an important option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Although many studies have analyzed emission implications of electric vehicle charging, time-specific emission effects of charging are inadequately understood. Here, we combine climate protection scenarios for Europe for the year 2050, detailed power system simulation at hourly time steps, and life cycle assessment of electricity in order to explore the influence of time on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with electric vehicle charging for representative days. We consider both average and short-term marginal emissions. We find that the mix of electricity generation technologies, and thus, also the emissions of charging, vary appreciably across the 24-h day. In our estimates for Europe for 2050, an assumed day-charging regime yields one-third-to-onehalf lower average emissions than an assumed night-charging regime. This is owing to high fractions of solar PV in the electricity mix during daytime and more reliance on natural gas electricity in the late evening and night. The effect is stronger during summer months than during winter months, with day charging causing one-half-totwo-thirds lower emissions than night charging during summer. Also, when short-term marginal electricity is assumed, emissions tend to be lower with day charging because of contributions from nuclear electricity during the day. However, the results for shortterm marginal electricity have high uncertainty. Overall, our results suggest a need for electric vehicle charging policies and emission assessments to take into consideration variations in electricity mixes and time profiles of vehicle charging over the 24-h day. K E Y W O R D Selectricity scenarios, greenhouse gas emissions, industrial ecology, integrated assessment model, life cycle assessment, power system model INTRODUCTIONSwitching from petroleum-burning transport to transport powered by climate-friendly electricity is an important strategy according to climate stabilization scenarios (Figure 1; Luderer et al., 2016;Tran et al., 2012;Williams et al., 2012). Understanding the current and future emissions associated with electric vehicle charging is a key component to formulating effective electrification strategies (Cox et al., 2018;Ellingsen & Hung, 2018; This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.