This study focuses upon the offshore sectors of the two important oil countries Norway and the United Kingdom (UK), and particularly whether and how policy instruments have provided incentives for the development, adoption and diffusion of environmentally benign technologies and hence reduction in emissions of the air pollutants NOx and VOCs. The assessment is that Norway is a bit more ‘advanced’ than the UK in terms of technological change in this issue area. In order to understand this difference, it is important to keep in mind that fundamental problem characteristics differ considerably between the two countries. For instance, in Norway, offshore emissions play an important role in the total emission picture. This is particularly the case for VOCs, where offshore emissions account for 60% of the total emissions. This is very different in the UK, where offshore NOx and VOC emissions only account for around 4–5%. The upshot of this is that the sheer governmental need to develop and apply effective technology in order to attain domestic and international emissions reduction goals is clearly much greater in Norway than in the UK.
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