Aberdeen is also known as the granite city. It is where a new £400 million South Harbour extension is bringing cruise ships into the city centre, boosting the region’s heritage tourism potential and economic diversification.
Aberdeen is a beautiful and ancient city, and its economy has been strongly shaped by the oil and gas sector. Sadly, many of the city’s shops and other commercial buildings are currently empty following the decline of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas extraction.
Looking across the sea to Norway, which is closer to Aberdeen than London, their Sovereign Wealth Fund (renamed the Government Pension Fund Global) transformed Norway’s oil and gas revenues into one of the world’s largest funds, and spending just 3% of this fund annually makes up 20 percent of the entire Norwegian government’s annual spend. The communities and places in Norway impacted by oil and gas extraction also directly benefit financially from it.
Ironically, the UK adds to the value of this Norwegian fund annually by importing vast quantities of Norway’s North Sea oil and gas.
Great British Energy has recently created their new head quarters in Aberdeen to invest in clean energy production and to assist the region’s economic diversification, but might they learn a trick from Norway and their shared prosperity energy model, which currently equates in value to US $365,000 for every Norwegian citizen?
