The maintenance of carbonscapes: Enacting Net Zero in Stavanger, Norway

Abstract

As a stable, democratic petrostate, Janus-faced Norway balances fossil fuel incumbency (profitable oil and gas exports) with leadership in green transitions (domestic hydropower supply and transport electrification) and just transitions (major donor to global green initiatives). These roles imbue domestic politics with reverence for fossil fuels as enablers of generous welfare state support, alongside a push to show progress on low-carbon energy transitions. This political dynamic has embraced the global rise to prominence of Net Zero target-setting, highly reliant on speculative, yet-to-emerge carbon mitigation technologies. Such a hubristic response to this target has served to direct massive financing to innovation activities of fossil incumbents. Nowhere is this push felt keener than in Stavanger, the oil capital rebranded to Norway’s ‘energy capital’, and the site of the country’s largest industrial hub Forus and great performative spectacles such as the Offshore Northern Seas conferences and numerous other oil and gas events. Yet it is also here that critique is often focused, pointing out the folly of continued investment that assumes oil and gas persistence in tempered form over rapid renewable energy rollout. We investigate the forms this enactment of Net Zero takes at the urban scale in Stavanger through which the promise of carbon removal is used to uphold carbonscapes. Empirical material includes place-based observation, participatory ethnography at events, and media reports. We engage with conceptual scholarship on the positionality of researchers, role of actionable knowledge, and the specific function of the knowledge economy to enable Stavanger’s juggling act as the site of fossil success since 1969, and champion of carbon removal innovation and development as one of Europe’s 112 climate-neutral 2030 Mission Cities. We argue that unpacking urban spectacle offers evidence of the interwoven nature of domestic politics and performative carbon mitigation approaches, constituting an entry point to critique mitigation deterrence.