DOI
10.1016/j.erss.2016.10.010

Summary
This paper provides an assessment on the successful rise and eventual failure events of the Norwegian biofuel industry. It investigates three reasons for the rise and decline of this field of study: (1) The petroleum industry and risk capital it attained, (2) the petroleum industries pull on technological expertise and (3) the failure of government incentives and supports.

The paper begins by describing the background information on Norway’s economic incentive to invest in their available fossil fuel reserves but also describes the short-sighted nature of these endeavours and claims that their government should be encouraging large companies to uptake renewable energies as a replacement, however, Norway has struggled to achieve renewable energy development.  

Fevolden & Klitkou apply a qualitative event-history analysis and a Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) approach to assess the validity of the three explanations for Norway’s development issues. The authors assume that the seven functions of a TIS, as described by Hekkert et al. , exist in the development of Norway’s biofuel industry. They go on to assess the relevance of the three stated failures of the Norwegian system against the seven TIS functions. They summarise their findings in table 1.  The event history section is highly details and broken up into four periods of time as recent as 2014. Here, Fevolden & Klitkou make use of 203 events in Norway’s energy sector to create a narrative explanation of their rise and fall through the years and how they apply to the seven TIS functions.

The concluding remarks make comment on the three initial identified issues. (1) some support for this issue was found, (2) limited support found for this issue and (3) good support found for this issue.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This paper is relevant to energy systems and the TIS approach literature. It does not offer any clear-cut relevance to reimagine higher education curricula but rather appropriates itself as a contribution to biofuel and TIS literature.

TIS is defined here by Hekkert et al. as an approach that ‘focuses on the most important processes that need to take place in the innovation systems to lead successfully to technology development and diffusion’. The functions of the TIS ‘interact with each other, and generate positive and negative feedback loops, thorough a combination of strong and weak system functions and strong and weak interactions of functions’.

The second of three issues related to failures in renewable energy development is an identified lack of technological knowledge and expertise related to renewable technology. The expertise however are found in hydrocarbon extraction.

Fevolden & Klitkou have stated that this study of Norway can be applicable to other EU countries that have struggled in the uptake of renewable energies as a result of fossil fuel dependence.  

Table 1. depicts the seven TIS functions and their relevance to the three identified failures of the Norwegian system. The table is minimal yet effective in showing the clear assessment of the TIS functions relative to the research question. This may act as an example for other studies or perhaps a teaching resource.  

Figure 1. presents a visual aid for a systems map ‘technological approaches for the production of second generation biofuels’. This diagram may be used as a teaching resource for the learning of biofuel production.

Point of Strength
The paper does not describe any specific approaches to reimagining higher education but does however add to the TIS literature and may be used as an example of system failure as seen with Norway’s renewable energy sector. Fevolden & Kiltkou initially identify a lack of expertise and knowledge in the renewable energy technology sector as a factor for failed development. This is likely to be the case in many other European countries, making this paper of possible relevance to a similar study in a different nations context. However, the findings for this particular issue pointed towards the fact there was rather an extensive level of R&D conducted by companies and research institutions. However, this issue may still be relevant to other countries.