Clemens Kraft director with warnings at the Pareto Conference

– The most important thing for us today was to make people understand that the government’s proposal to change the resource rent tax for small hydropower plants will undermine Norway’s power balance, says Knud Nørve after his presentation.

For the 28th time, the «Power and Renewable Energy Conference», known to many as the Pareto Conference, was held on 29 January. From the stage, Knud Nørve argued strongly against the government’s resource rent tax proposal for the small hydropower industry. – Small hydropower plants do not have superprofits on which to levy resource rent tax, and the consequences of the proposal will therefore be catastrophic for the entire small hydropower industry if the government’s proposal is adopted. Many in the audience nodded in agreement with Knud Nørve’s arguments.

Nørve went on to explain that small hydropower plants, unlike fish farms, for example, do not use resources belonging to the community, but rather water rights and property belonging to private landowners. The power plants pay their "resource rent" in the form of rent to the private landowners. If the state is to impose a resource rent tax on top of this, it will have a dramatic effect. – Thema Consulting estimates an 83% reduction in the equity value of the sector’s 755 existing small hydropower plants affected by the proposal. We will see a tidal wave of bankruptcies and a complete halt to further development, which will undermine society’s climate targets. 

Click on the image to view the presentation:

Important meeting place

The Pareto Conference is known as an important place to meet contacts and industry peers, while also staying up to date on new directions in the energy sector. Several speakers addressed topics such as grid-connected batteries (BESS), the development of data centres in Norway, and bottlenecks hindering further development of the industry in Norway.

Among those attending were also Unni Hongseth and Morten Tronsen from Clemens Kraft, as well as several representatives from Allstad. 

– It is interesting to hear what the industry is saying; a lot of interesting things come up, and the price outlook shows that the market can provide Clemens Kraft with good earnings in 2026 as well, says Morten Tronsen as the presentations came to an end and evening began to fall. We hope he is right in his prediction.