Norway Country Report - 2008

National Solar Heating & Cooling Policies

There are no national policies specifically addressing the solar heating and cooling area. Solar heating might be part of other topics like low energy buildings.

Government Agencies Responsible for Solar Heating & Cooling Activities

Norwegian Research Council
Norwegian Research Council plays a vital role in developing and implementing the country's national research strategy, acting as a government adviser, a funding agency and coordinator of research activities. The Research Council is responsible for the administration of most of the public funding available for R&D in the field of energy and water resource management.

Enova SF
Enova SF is a public enterprise owned by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. The main mission is to contribute to environmentally sound and rational use and production of energy, relying on financial instruments and incentives to stimulate market actors and mechanisms to achieve national energy policy goals. Stimulating construction of natural gas infrastructure, primarily as a measure to displace use of oil, is also among Enova's tasks. Enova SF enjoys considerable freedom regarding the choice and composition of its strategic foci and policy measures. Enova SF advises the Ministry in questions relating to energy efficiency and new renewable energy.

Innovation Norway
Innovation Norway promotes nationwide industrial development profitable to both the corporate economy and Norway's national economy, and helps release the potential of different districts and regions by contributing towards innovation, internationalisation and promotion. Innovation Norway has offices in all the Norwegian counties and in more than 30 countries world wide. The core group of clients are Norwegian companies, predominantly SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). Energy projects based on biomass (fuel wood, and heat production), especially in rural areas tied to agriculture, are given priority.

The Norwegian State Housing Bank
The Housing Bank is the main instrument of the Norwegian Parliament, the Norwegian government and the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development for the implementation of national housing policy. Additional loans at a modest interest rate may be granted for installations and efforts to reduce use of energy or use of flexible heating systems. Separate web-page on low energy housing: www.lavenergihus.no

Existing Programs

There is no national program dedicated to solar heating and cooling. Some relevant programs, which in principle include the area of solar heating and cooling, are described below. However, none of these have SHC as a priority topic and very few SHC projects have been funded.

The Clean Energy System of the Future (RENERGI)
The program is to facilitate research in both the long-term (30 years) and the short-term perspective (5 to 10 years). The program started in 2004 and will continue for 10 years. RENERGI will be limited to energy production and transmission, and to stationary and mobile energy use.

The following fields will form the basis for ranking priorities within RENERGI:

• Renewable energy production
• Natural gas and gas-fired power plants with CO2 management
• Hydrogen
• Energy systems
• Energy markets
• Energy use
• Energy policy and international agreements

Many issues for research will cover several of the areas mentioned above, or must be considered vertical in the energy value chain from primary production to end user, with the focus on the role of the authorities and private players.

Strategic programs at research institutions. The Research Council supports a number of strategic research programs at universities and research institutions. Programs should focus on topics of fundamental importance related to the production and use of energy.

Extended responsibilities for Enova SF
The activities of Enova are financed by the Energy Fund, which receives the revenues from a levy on the electricity distribution tariff (NOK 0.01 per kWh) and from state budget grants.

In the 2007 State Budget, the Government has allocated NOK 10 billions (approx 2.3 billion Euros) to a new Basic Fund for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, and will suggest the allocation of another NOK 10 billions in 2009. Enova SF will administer the new Fund.

Today, Enova manages over NOK 700 million per annum. Including this extra allocation, Enova will manage about NOK 1.6 billion (approx 180 million Euros) annually from 2010.

About 1/3 of the total support will be allocated to the new feed-in tariff system for the production of renewable electricity. The remaining 2/3 will be allocated to increased efforts in the areas of bio energy and district heating, energy saving and energy efficiency measures. The area of solar heating and cooling will in general be included in this last area, but the expected funds towards this sector will most likely be very limited the coming couple of years.

Enova has a number of subprograms where SHC in general could be included:

Heat
The Heat program grants investment support to heat production plants and infrastructure for waterborne heating with annual capacities of 0.5 GWh or more.

Introduction of new energy technologies The program aims at promoting new energy technologies that have only been tested in laboratories or small-scale pilots or does not exist in today's market, or technologies for which adaptations are necessary to function under Norwegian conditions.

Pilot program - innovative energy technologies
In order to support new and innovative energy technologies, Enova SF, the Research Council of Norway and Innovation Norway have jointly established a program for technology introduction. Projects with a high degree of innovation (although not R&D), good potential for business development and that are market based will be prioritized.

New Programs

Energi 21 is a program initiated by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, in order to meet the future challenges of the energy sector in Norway. The main aim of the program is to increase the added value in the energy sector by focusing on research development of new technology.

The program will be enabled through a close cooperation between the government, research institutions and energy industry. Solar heating and cooling is not a focus area in this program.

Active Solar

The Norwegian Research Council has funded a research project at the University of Oslo, with the title "Sustainable Polymers for Solar Collector Applications". The goal of the project is to summarize the market status and to disseminate information about new international developments in this field. New and cheap solar collectors will be developed using polymeric materials to increase the cost effectiveness of solar systems. This project is contributing to the IEA SHC Task 39 - Polymeric Materials for Solar Thermal Applications.

The Løvåshagen project close to Bergen has 80 apartments were 28 will be built with passive house standard and 52 with low energy standard. The passive houses will have a simplified water heating system where one central located radiator will cover the whole apartment. Each apartment has a combined solar heating system for domestic hot water and space heating. The systems with evacuated tubular collectors will cover 50% of the DHW and 15-20% of the space heating demand.

Illustration by ABO Arkitekter/MIR.

Bjørnveien 119
Solar energy and gas covers the heat demand in an apartment building in Oslo. 95 m2 of polymer collectors from Solarnor covers 20-25% of the total heat demand for hot water and space heating. The expected annual outcome of the collectors are 250 kWh/m2 and the calculated solar energy cost is about 0,60 NOK/kWh (7,3 €cent/kWh).

Building Integration

The Norwegian Research Council, Enova and the State Housing Bank are funding the EKSBO-project focusing on energy efficient housing renovation. This is a collaborative activity between researchers and about fifteen Norwegian industry companies. The project is focusing on how to renovate houses to a very high energy standard and to develop strategies which support market penetration of such renovations explicitly directed towards market segments with high renovation and multipliable potentials. EKSBO is the Norwegian participant in the IEA SHC Task 37 Advanced Housing Renovation with Solar and Conservation, were Norway also holds the Operating Agent responsibility.

Market Status

The Norwegian market for solar heating systems is very limited, and it is estimated that that not more than 1000 m2 were installed in 2006. The statistics for 2007 is not yet available, but it is not likely that this number has increased substantially from 2006.

There are a couple of small Norwegian manufacturers with ambitions to develop systems for the international market. Some, but very few dealers offer imported solar heating systems, both evacuated and flat-plate collectors. Many of the distributors predict an increase of sales in 2008.