AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The main focus of this thesis has been to gain an understanding on the key challenges for self-organization between the relevant stakeholders necessary for rolling out a North Sea Offshore Grid. The North Sea Offshore Grid (NSOG) is an important component in the realization of the renewable energy potential in different European countries. Up till now no commonly accepted strategy has been composed for rolling out this offshore grid in a coordinated way. This lack of a commonly accepted strategy is affecting the trust and progress in international collaboration and in the coordinate development of national visions. This lack of coordination increases the risk for lock-in effects leading to sub-optimal development pathways. The current research and practices on the valuation of optimal grid configuration has been based on the comparison of costs and benefits of the different policy options. This research has taken a different approach, and has looked at the different stakeholder perspectives on developments in the offshore wind industry. Results show multiple challenges currently blocking a coordinated NSOG rollout. One of the major challenges is the discrepancy and the lack of common ground between stakeholders on the monetization, composition and distribution of these costs and benefits. These disagreements on costs and benefits are not likely to be resolved by yet another improved effort at classic cost-benefit analysis. Also, the identification of costs and benefits for individual projects lacks the synergy effects of a total grid. Other important challenges identified are the lack of profitability and high risk level of making (anticipatory) investments necessary to facilitate a future grid expansion and the lack of trust between the different stakeholder on future commitment and collaboration. The combination of these challenges has resulted in an equilibrium of stakeholders defecting and performing free-riders behavior, waiting for others to take the risk and invest in sufficient offshore wind capacity necessary for allowing for profitable business case to be set up. It has thus been argued that focus of the current discussions should shift from identifying the most efficient project or grid configuration, towards a discussion about ways how to increasing the willingness of Member States to express their long-term financial commitment towards the development of the grid and accept the investment risks by putting the costs and benefits of the NSOG in a broader perspective of potential gains for the individual Member States. This research has used the SES-framework and the self-organization theory from Ostrom as tools for structuring and reflecting on the results. However, both the framework as the theory have been initially developed for ecological systems. Since the North Sea Offshore Grid is a Social Technical System (STS), a second line of research which has been presented in this report is related to the applicability of both the framework and the theory on comparable STS.