In 2017 UiT established the Arctic Centre for Sustainable Energy (ARC). ARC is an interdisciplinary centre focusing on Arctic challenges and conditions within renewable
The center’s main objectives are:
Please send us an email if you want to subscribe to ARC's informal, bi-weekly newsletter Short news.
The Board is ARC's main decision-making body. The Board consists of representatives (deans, department heads or senior scientific staff) from the four active faculties, as well as a representative from the rector team at UiT.
The day-to-day management is done by the ARC leader, who has the overall responsibility and management function for the academic and administrative activities of the centre. The ARC leader is supported by the ARC project coordinator.
The Management Team consists of seven Research coordinators and their deputies. They are responsible for the coordination of the activities and projects that fall within ARC's seven research areas.
Renewable energy, wind power resources, wind power prediction, time series analysis, machine learning, statistical signal processing, nonlinear systems, higher order statistics, microwaves, ultrasound and hypertermia.
Leader UiT Arctic Center for sustainable energy (ARC): https://arc.uit.no
Research projects:
Supervision of PhD students:
The primary goal of my research is to contribute to a sustainable society. I have ten years experience in research on solar energy systems, with a special focus on northern conditions. My current reserach focus is how electric transportation powered by renewable energy can enable a sustainable transportation system. In particular, I work with electric avaiation.
Projects
Abhik’s research interests center broadly around soft materials based on porphyrin analogues and their applications to both medicine and renewable energy. Current projects in his laboratory focus on (a) synthetic method development, (b) high- and low-valent transition metal compounds and their applications to catalysis and renewable energy, (c) fluorinated materials, (d) photodynamic therapy and cancer theranostics, (e) 2D van der Waals and covalent heterostructures with applications to nanomedicine, (f) dye-sensitized solar cells, and (g) a variety of computer simulations. For recent publications, check out the links below.
CV and publication list (via ORCID)
Recent review articles
My research field is power electronics with application within future energy system and electric transport, two inspiring areas that are important for the transition to a sustainable future. The use of power conversion technology through power electronics and associated control algorithms is essential for renewable energy, electric transport and energy storage. Charging of electric vehicles, maritime vessels and aircrafts is combining all those research areas on both component and system level, representing an important element for the electric future.
Keywords:
Latest news | 21 February 2023
Longyearbyen henter erfaringer fra Smart Senja 
Det var stort oppmøte når Longyearbyen Lokalstyre i forrige uke, i samarbeid med samfunnsvitere på UiT, arrangerte energikafe etter modell fra Smart Senja. Longyearbyen står overfor en omfattende energiomstilling, og med energikafeen ønsket lokalstyret å skape en sterkere lokal involvering og forankring til denne prosessen.
Trykk her for å lese mer om energikafeen og hvilke tanker de to involverte masterstudentene Anna B. Olerud og Christian T. Berlinger gjør seg om energidiskusjonene i lokalsamfunnet.
One of ARC’s main objectives is to ensure that graduates receive high quality education and expertise within renewable energy and CO2 management. One way to do this is that the center itself creates and runs individual study programs. While this is an option, ARC has chosen a slightly diffeent approach to achieve the center's educational aspirations. We believe that sustainability and knowledge about the green transition is relevant for students across a variety of disciplines. The center therefore focuses on incorporating these topics into already existing study programs, either as new, interdisciplinary courses, or as additional content in the programs’ core classes.
One such example is Energiomstilling: fra teori til praksis (Energy transitions: from theory to practice), a case-based 10-credit course that gives students hands-on experience with energy transitions in the north. This is a fairly new course developed specifically to train students to look at issues and challenges around local transitions cases from an interdisciplinary perspective – because this is how the interaction between society and technology operates in real life.
Another example is Fornybar energi (Renewable energy), a newly established five year civil engineering program that gives students in-depth knowledge about renewable energy sources and their use in society. As a student of Fornybar energi, you could for instance choose to specialize in a specific renewable energy source, and learn about the power production, storage, consumption, and environmental impact of this energy source. During the program, students will also develop and conduct an independent research project. The Fornybar energi program is interdisciplinary in nature, and combines fields like mathematics, data science, physics, chemistry, and biology.
In the “Education” section on this website you can see a list of ARC-related courses offered at the university. If you want to know more about the programs, just simply click on the program name and you’ll be redirected to an UiT-page where you can read about the program description and the admission requirements. Perhaps you will even find your future study program?
How sustainable are green technologies, and how might we account for the impact on ecological systems when assessing the efficiencies of these technologies?
These are the core questions that the feasibility study «The ARC Methodology» seeks to answer. The study, funded by ARC, is the result of a joint effort by Øyvind Stokke, Svein Anders Lie, and Ove Aigner Haukenes at the department of philosophy (IFF), UiT to critically assess green technology development from a philosophical point of view. The aim is to establish a conceptually new way to look at the sustainability of technologies.
The study is now published on a dedicated website called Synergic. Congratulations! On the website you can read more about the philosophers' interdisciplinary work in the fields of environment and technology.
Some of you might recognize the name of the study. The ARC Methodology has already been presented in various fora: first, at Verdensteateret in February this year and most recently at the ARC mini symposium in October. In the latter, the study received positive feedback for its innovative approach and efforts to use insights from the field of philosophy to shed light on aspects of technological advancements that tend to be overlooked.
Knowing that the climate crisis and environmental crisis are two sides of the same coin, it is crucial that green technologies not only lower CO2 emissions but also lower the human toll on land- and sea ecosystems. However, green technologies are generally more area and resource intensive than conventional technologies, so this is often not the case. Instead, this environmental damage is considered a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of reducing emissions.
The 2019 Global assessment report from IPBES considers "changes in land and sea use” and "direct exploitation of organisms” as more severe environmental threats than those projected by climate change—which come in third on their list of environmental concerns. At the same time, we see that green technologies often shift the burden from the atmosphere to the terrestrial sphere to achieve a competitive levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) compared to conventional solutions. In so doing, they externalize costs onto land and sea areas instead of the atmosphere. A new way to measure sustainability is therefore needed in order to avoid bringing old problems into new solutions.
Cost efficiency is undoubtedly important for promoting green technologies over traditional ones. At the same time, if overall ecosystem impact is left out of the equation, the pursuit of cost-efficiency might end up defeating the technologies' original purpose – namely to represent a better alternative for ecological systems. This aspect has been thoroughly considered when developing the methodology.
The methodology
In the actual methodology, the three researchers propose a framework where one looks at the combined synergies of how green technologies interact with the natural environment. The idea is to first identify a technology's potential for synergy with the natural environment, then evaluate the implementation context for "synergy partners", and finally weigh the resulting synergy effects that the technology is likely to manifest.
This sounds simple enough, but it does require some of philosophical groundwork, such as defining exactly what synergy effects are, which ones to use (what are ‘'good’' and ‘'bad’' synergies?) and what kind of sustainability paradigm and concept of "'naturalness’' to use. These clarifications questions help to decide which sort of efficiency one should "pledge allegiance” to.
Let us use the example of plants to visualize the methodology. Plants are only 1% efficient at converting sunlight to power while industrial solar cells are a whopping 23% efficient. This does not make solar cells better than plants. Through a plethora of synergies, plants compensate for their relatively low energy conversion efficiency by generating every renewable resource on earth and supplying most of the materials for the global market while sustaining nearly all life on the planet. Their exceptional degree of systemic efficiency more than compensates for their lower individual efficiency.
The methodology attempts to systematize tradeoffs between technology and ecology in such a way that they can be included in an assessments - optimally in such a way that both technological and ecological (and thus long-term economic) efficiency increases. Synergy is after all a win-win-win-(etc.) concept.
In the final report on the new Synergic website you can find a thorough breakdown of this methodology, as well as several examples of how it might be used in real life cases. Happy reading!
COP27 in Sharm el-Sheik Photo: Ove Aigner Haukenes
Earlier this month, Assoc. Professor Øyvind Stokke and master student Ove Aigner Haukenes travelled to Egypt to partake in the second week of the Climate Change Conference COP27, which was held in the busy city of Sharm el-Sheik from 6-8 November.
They went on behalf of the Sustainability think tank at UiT to explore how the concept of sustainability was understood and deployed at the convention.
"A key goal of ours was to bring forward critical aspects that we as philosophers believe to be essential to succeed with transformational change towards a sustainable world - in practice, not only in theory", says Ove.
One of these aspects is asking the right questions: "We wanted to foster a productive discussion by asking the questions that are often evaded. What solutions do we actually have? How are we progressing? And what can we realistically hope for?" says Øyvind.
The two academics are currently in the last stage of completing a feasibility study for assessing the sustainability of technologies, called “The ARC Methodology”. This theoretical framework was used as a backdrop for interpreting what they saw at the convention.
An example of this were the presentations of the latest green tech advancements, which took up a large part of COP27. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) received particular attention since extracting C02 from the atmosphere is now necessary to stay under the 2-degree warming target.
While Ove and Øyvind found it interesting to see the newest technologies, they did notice that the talks did not provide the complete picture.
Genuine debates about massively scaling down energy and resource consumption – not just making consumption "greener" – were largely lacking. And one may wonder if successful removal of CO2-emissions from fossil fuel usage will reduce our incentive to leave the remaining oil in the ground. There were some talk about nature-based solutions, but the covnention's main theme centered around removing CO2 from the atmosphere at a questionable speed.
Ideally, solutions to the climate crisis should consider the biodiversity crisis as well, since many environmental organisations consider this to be an even bigger threat than global warming. There is no single solution that can fix everything, but a first and necessary step is to see these crises as something that needs to be tackled together.
Whilst in Egypt, Ove and Øyvind tried to bring forward the abovementioned arguments when interacting with panelists. The duo brought up the more holistic CCU-solutions used in the ARC algae project in Finnfjord as one such example during a panel discussion in the Bellona pavilion. At the Nordic pavilion, the philosophers asked if it is safe to assume that new centralized mega-projects will be able to counter the negative effects of older mega-projects, or whether the problem perhaps lies with mega-projects themselves. Both the audience and the panelists were engaged by the question and considered it a major concern that needed further debate.
Some of these interactions have been recorded and will soon be available as podcasts on UiT’s website. Here it will also be possible to hear some philosophical takes on COP27 and the green transitions, as well as interviews with panelists and climate change activists.
23.11.2022 - Fyrtårn Project SusSTEMED
18.11.2022 - ARC Digitalization seminar
12.10.2022 - ARC mini symposium
15.06.2022 - ARC seminar Toril Ringholm
07.06.2022 - ARC seminar - Chiara Bordin
18.05.2022 - ARC seminar - Katja Karppinen
09.05.2022 - ARC seminar - Clara Good
07.04.2022 - ARC seminar - Hoai Phuong Ha
31.03.2022 - ARC seminar - Berit Kristoffersen
29.03.2022 - ARC seminar - Filippo Bianchi
24.03.2022 - ARC seminar - Hans C. Bernstein
18.02.2022 - Presentation: The ARC Methodology
15.02.2022 - ARC seminar - Jennifer Claire Hayward
10.02.2022 - ARC seminar - Matteo Chiesa
Research coordinator: Hoai Phuong Ha
Deputy: Filippo Maria Bianchi
ARC researchers in the Digitalization area work on finding solutions to some of the challenges that the development of renewable energy systems bring about, while at the same time making use of the opportunities that technology shifts present.
For instance, renewable energy systems typically produce varying loads, which in turn complicates voltage stability and the capacity of the electrical distribution grid. On the other hand, new inventions such as smart metering and digital algorithms can be used to optimize electricity usage and open new energy markets. Digital technologies are key to both.
Digitalization also contributes to climate neutrality goals via advanced climate and environmental observation. These observations are needed to understand and predict the flux of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. However, according to the European Green Deal challenges, in-situ measurements for hotspots with strong emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants are still lacking. ARC-researchers respond directly to this by studying and developing energy-efficient autonomous in-situ measurement technologies.
Other members
Chiara Bordin
Qixia Zhang
Michele Guerrera
Jonas Berg Hansen
Hoang Loc La
Silvia Anna Cordieri
Torgeir Sulheim
Key publications
See overview of Hoai Phuong Ha published articles here
See overview of Filippo Maria Bianchi published articles here
Ongoing projects and activities
International:
National:
Research coordinator: Bjarte Hoff
Deputy:
In the research area of eSystems, ARC scientists are working on the future electric energy systems and conversion technology. Electrification of our society creates new types of energy systems that come with new challenges.
In electric transport, the introduction of components like batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and electric motors changes the on-board energy system in electric vehicles, ships, and aircrafts. In the electricity grid, the introduction of distributed and intermittent renewable energy changes our grid with local production and power electronic converters. These alter the grid's behaviour and challenge its stability and protection schemes. Power electronic converters are a key enabler for electrification and control of electric power, hence an important research activity within eSystems.
eSystems contribute to climate neutrality goals through electrification and preparing energy systems for an increased amount of renewable energy and sustainable energy carriers like hydrogen. With electric energy from renewable sources, fossil fuel can be replaced by more sustainable solutions.
Other members
Charu Sharma
Pawan Sharma
Nasrin Kianpoor
Umer Sohail
Hussein Al-Sallami
Martin Haug
Koen van Greevenbroek
Key publications
See overview of Bjarte Hoff's published articles here.
Ongoing projects and activities
International
National:
Research coordinator: Hans C. Bernstein
Deputy: Katja Karppinen
Science and technology that address the climate crisis are now a priority for all, but Arctic societies are unique stakeholders because we are experiencing the most rapid changes on the planet. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at a historic high, recently surpassing 400 ppm for the first time in human history.
We are also contending with historic atmospheric methane gas concentrations, which has 84-times greater heat trapping effects than carbon dioxide. The people of the Arctic – together with the world – have reached the understanding that emission reductions are necessary for sustainability but we must also invest in new technologies for carbon capture, sequestration and utilization. Biological organisms, such as plants, algae and bacteria, can capture carbon and integrate into their metabolites and biomass. In plants, the molecules are mostly integrated as sugar molecules into cell wall components, such as cellulose. The annual production of cellulose through photosynthesis is estimated to be 15 x 1012 tons, forming a major sink and reservoir for carbon that can be utilized for sustainable bioenergy production.
How will ARC provide solutions? We support research, education and industrial cooperation with the ultimate goal of controlling the accumulation of carbon from the atmosphere and aid its utilization for bioenergy solutions. We believe that fostering fundamental science and innovation together with raising public awareness will lead to measurable action. ARC’s mission is unique because of its focus on social and economic drivers in high latitude societies.
Other members
Kirsten Krause
Grzegorz Konert
Sebastian Petters
Michael Dills
Hanna Schweitzer
Muhammad Furwan Ashraf
Corine Faehn
Hilary Edema
Nerea Aalto
Key publications
See overview of Hans C. Bernstein's published articles here
See overview of Katja Karppinen's published articles here
Ongoing projects and activities
Research coordinator: Abhik Ghosh
Deputy: Matteo Chiesa
Material technology is one of the columns on which a new future is built. The properties of a new material can be the difference to make or break a new concept. In the world of renewable energy, material science has been one of the main reasons that solar cell technology has become so efficient and cheap at the same time.
ARC scientists in the Advanced materials area study the material deployed in renewable energy technologies, improve already existing ones and help develop new materials that will be used in future low-carbon societies.
Other members
Hao Chen
Tuza Olukan
Simon Larsen
Abraham Alemayehu
Abdulrahman Saleh Qaid Alhagri
Karoline Ingebrigtsen
Odin Foldvik Eikeland
Krister Johanessen
Key publications
See overview of Abhik Ghosh's published articles here
See overview of Matteo Chiesa's published articles here
Ongoing projects and activities
About the Research coordinator
Abhik Ghosh grew up in India and did his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota under the tutelage of Paul G. Gassman, while also extensively collaborating with Jan Almlöf (formerly a professor at UiO and a professor II at UiT). After postdoctoral stints in bioinorganic chemistry with Larry Que and David Bocian, he took up a faculty position at UiT in 1996, where he has been full professor since 2000. He was a Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (1997-2004) and on several occasions a Visiting Professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand (2006-2015). Since 2021, he has led the UiT’s Center for Sustainable STEM Education.
Abhik has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, and the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines. He edited the popular science book Letters to a Young Chemist (Wiley, 2011) and coauthored the textbook Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements (Wiley, 2014); the latter won the 2015 PROSE Award for Best Textbook in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. In 2022, he became a member of the European Academy of Sciences and also received the Hans Fischer Career Award for Lifetime Achievements in Porphyrin Chemistry. As a gay chemist, Abhik has been involved in a variety of projects aimed at diversifying chemistry.
Abhik’s research interests center broadly around soft materials based on porphyrin analogues and their applications to both medicine and renewable energy. Current projects in his laboratory focus on
(a) synthetic method development
(b) photodynamic therapy and cancer theranostics
(c) dye-sensitized solar cells
(d) fluorinated materials
(e) functionalization of low-dimensional, especially 2D, materials, and
(f) high- and low-valent transition metal compounds and their applications to catalysis and renewable energy
Research coordinator: Tobias Boström
Deputy: tba
In total, the sun provides about 10 000 times the amount of energy that is used globally in a year. If we were to store all the solar energy from one hour of incoming sunshine, we would have enough power to run the world for one year! And this is just solar power. If we add wind power, hydropower, and tidal forces to the list, it quickly becomes clear that establishing a modern society based on renewable sources is not a question of possibility – it is a matter of solving practical issues.
In the area of Power generation, ARC researchers look at how we can solve the practical issues that stem from both the production and consumption of renewable energy.
Key publications
Projects and activities
Research coordinator: Berit Kristoffersen
Deupty: Jennifer Clare Heyward
The transition from a global society dependent on oil towards a sustainable society based upon renewable energy is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Such a process brings up everything from ethical to societal questions that need to be considered, in order to build a solid foundation for the solutions that are being implemented.
Philosophy and social sciences are important tools to be one step ahead of the development, and guide and coordinate technological and social evolution. They lay down the stepping stones that are needed to cross the boundaries between theory and practice when exploring new territories. And are key to achieve the social and international cooperation that is needed for success on a larger scale.
Other members
Toril Merete Ringholm
Hans Kristian Hernes
Øyvind Stokke
Anna-Karin Margareta Andersson
Marie Koksvik Thorsen
Inger Helene Svartdal
Erik W. Strømsheim
Magnus E. Eilertsen
Cladua. S. W. Cheng
Key publications
See overview of Berit Kristoffersen's published articles here
See overview of Jennifer Clare Heyward's published articles here
Ongoing projects and activities
Research coordinator: Clara Good
Deputy: Mohamad Mustafa
We are all familiar with the electric car. But did you know that there is an electric fishing boat in Senja, and two electric airplanes in Bardu? ARC is testing and developing further possibilities within low carbon transport at these sites. We need to develop more then just ground based transport alternatives, to achieve a complete transition to an oil free society.
Sea- and air alternatives are as important in the bigger picture. The two first electric airplanes to be tested in an arctic environment were recently delivered to an airbase in Bardu, North Norway. They were baptised in the norwegian soda ‘Solo’, and taken for a first spin on the tarmac (video). But this project is not only about testing the capability of the airplanes. It is about testing the whole chain of components required to make them run on locally produced electricity. The hangar walls have been covered with solar panels and and the energy is stored on site, so that the planes can be charged without using power from the external grid. The project can be seen as a protoype of a renewable energy airport, that can be scaled up to commercial sizes, based on the information from this test.
The same goes for the fishing boat, where the bottle neck is the need for highly efficient charging stations. A boat can carry a lot of batteries, in contrast to an airplane, and the challenge is to ensure that it charges fast enough to be used in a commercial fishing schedule. This requires rethinking the backbone of the electrical system, in our case for some traditional fishing townships at Senja.
Other members
Bright Adu-Gyamfi
Key publications
See overview of Clara Good's published articles here
See overview of Mohamad Mustafa's published articles here
Ongoing projects and activities
