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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

It's really gas producing Norway: 3rd largest nat gas exporter. They're ~13th in oil exports.

...And 2nd in worldwide median income, which is half the real reason here. The other half is that Norway has very favorable tax treatment for electric cars vs not (which is at least mentioned in this article thankfully).

But being the 13th largest oil exporter seems like a very dim relation that's not really relevant, except as a cute thing. It's like saying "Wood houses popular in Granite-producing New Hampshire." "Ad blockers popular among ad producing community." etc

[note this was commentary on submission title chosen, which previously was the same as the article: "Electric cars grab almost half of sales in oil-producing Norway"]

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There's a little more than cuteness here. If a country has a large economic interest in producing fossil fuels, there are often political forces driving consumption of fossil fuels, and undermining any and all attempt to even discuss the consequences of fossil fuels.

Looking at the US, the oil industry has long used its muscle to drive (heh) the use of automobiles and internal combustion engines, and to suppress initiatives to slow, halt, or reverse climate change.

And that's the interesting thing here: How is it that Norway's economy is so dependent upon its fossil fuels, but this doesn't appear to blind it to the consequences of fossil fuel use?

Norway has a lot of hydro, so they are also heavily dependent on renewable energy, and one is much easier to export than the other.

One factor may be government, vs private parties, control of the companies. For the largest company Equinor, read this quote:

The current company was formed by the 2007 merger of Statoil with the oil and gas division of Norsk Hydro. As of 2017, the Government of Norway is the largest shareholder with 67% of the shares, while the rest is public stock. The ownership interest is managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.

> There's a little more than cuteness here. If a country has a large economic interest in producing fossil fuels, there are often political forces driving consumption of fossil fuels, and undermining any and all attempt to even discuss the consequences of fossil fuels.

-Do keep in mind the Norwegian domestic market for fossil fuels is tiny compared to what we extract; the obvious hypocritical overtones aside, there's no reason we couldn't sell lots of hydrocarbons abroad while still promoting cleaner stuff in our domestic market.

It seems that is because an Iraqi oil engineer with the right foresight was at the right place at the right time. Fascinating story! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594153

Apparently when Norway found oil, they were blessed with a government that was both honest and farsighted, noted the effect of the resource curse in other countries, called in a consultant from the Middle East who had seen it firsthand, and set up a system that carefully firewalled the oil money to mitigate its corrupting influence. I'm not clear on exactly how the firewall works, but people who understand it better than I do, have credited it with Norway still being a great place to live today.

You can't tell if it worked until the resource runs out.

It's always a great place to live while the resources are being extracted.

Tell me, how large is the oil industry relative to other industries?

Or to put it in other words, if all oil extraction stops tomorrow what would happen to the economy?

> It's always a great place to live while the resources are being extracted.

Intuitively you would expect that. The thing that's so difficult for us to wrap our heads around about the resource curse is that intuition is completely wrong here; a sufficiently valuable natural resource can ruin a country even while it is being extracted.

The short version of the reason why is that it breaks the alignment of interest between the rulers and the people. Manufacturing industry needs a healthy and capable workforce, but as this excellent video puts it, a gold mine can run with dying slaves and still produce great treasure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

> I'm not clear on exactly how the firewall works

The government has agreed with itself that all the oil money goes into a big fund, and that they only use a small percentage of the expected return of the fund per year.

They've also renamed it the pension fund to make it less attractive for the current ruling politician to use more for their pet issues.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...

Easy. They just export the bad thing, and keep the good thing for themselves.

It's even easiest when you realize domestic consumption is tiny relative to exports, so the local industry doesn't care.

In the US for years it was illegal to export oil. So industry had good motivation to encourage local use.

Norway also has a vert particular geography. It is the definition of a coastal country. Populations are very clustered around port towns. Average commutes are relatively short, and mountain roads between towns are not strait high speed highways found in places like the US. The country lends itself to electric cars.

>> The average trip is 14,5 km, an increase from 2009, and lasts for 24 minutes. The average length travelled per day by each person is 47,2 km, spending 78 minutes again an increase from 2009.

https://www.toi.no/travel-behaviour/the-norwegian-national-t...

Compare canada, with double the commuting distance:

>> The majority of people now work in a usual location, travelling an average of 22.8 km one-way in a straight-line distance.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171129/dq171...

Electric car range is well beyond the state where it makes a difference whether your commute is 15km or 30.

Yes, but average commute is a measure of average journey distances which in turn speaks to average longer journey lengths. Range is still the predominant limitation on electric cars.

Personally, I only commute a few km each day. An electic car would be great. But I also live in Canada. My monthly trip to my parents (500+km, two ferries) or my yearly trip to Winnipeg (2000+km, winter, including kicking horse pass), means that an electric car isn't an option. And the local insurance structure means two cars is equally impractical.

For trips that happen monthly or yearly, you could rent a car.

Again, impractical. Renting would cost far more than driving a personal car. It would require logistics (pickup/dropoff, working hours, parking etc) and the car would not be properly equipped (Rental cars in BC don't have block heaters, snow tires, chains). And rental cars cannot be driven "off road", such as my parents' 1km driveway. A tiny honda IC can do all those things repeatedly without issue.

Perhaps it’s cultural, but plenty of my coworkers who drive to work in Europe still rent cars for long road trips.

It’s really not that impractical if it’s really occasional.

It’s really not that impractical if it’s really occasional.

It’s impractical if you are looking for an excuse not to change your ways.

>> It’s really not that impractical if it’s really occasional.

It is when I only have a finite amount of leave that I can take. If the rental car is more expensive, must be picked up/dropped of during business hours, has unsuitable tires for a Canadian mountain pass in winter, and will bankrupt me should I have an accident "off road", it isn't practical. If I just have the long weekend, just three non-business days, I don't want to spend half of those dealing with the rental car. I want to get in my car at 2am and be where I need to be by dawn.

Not one thing you said is a reasonable concern. Rental cars must be picked up during business hours (which is 24/7 in a lot of places), but can be dropped off at any time. Any decent agency will provide proper tires for your climate. Bankrupcy can be 100% avoided by paying the extra insurance. It is literally impossible to spend "half a weekend" dealing with the rental car.

The point being, again, it's not impractical to rent a car for a long road trip for everyone. It might not work for you, but then again not everyone leaves at 2am for a weekend trip off-road in the mountains during Canadian winter.

You can go out and drive 500km (310 miles) right now, today, in an electric car that has been on the market for years.

If you want to do it without charging, you'll need to be careful with the use of climate control and speed.

If you're happy to charge once (20-30mins) then it's utterly trivial.

The restriction is not range - the restriction is cost. The electric cars that aren't just silly toys are still quite expensive.

More than a cute factor, Norway is investing the wealth derived from fossil fuels in future alternatives to them.

And being the leader in EV penetration, Norway will be able to provide clues to the rest of the world about how the transition will go. Things like:

- At what level of EV penetration will petrol stations start to close? - What types of business models work for charging? Is it retail stores subsidizing charging stations to drive foot traffic while people wait? Retrofitting streetlights to enable on street parking? Subscription service or pay by the kwh or maybe by the mile? - Can EVs enable smart grid demand response?

Norway is rich enough to afford EV cars and the better environment that goes with it.

Although there are people with infantile Top Gear attitudes towards petrol (gas) and the noises made by V8 naturally aspirated engines, these people choose not to live next to really busy roads. Funny that. They don't enjoy the filth and the noise that much.

Norway is just rich enough to afford quality air and silence. They are not slumming it. Chinese cities are going the same way, getting rich enough to get rid of the moto-scooters and motorbikes.

In ten years time we will have people go to places like America to come back and joke about 'how they still drive petrol cars' as if the place is backward. See also Romania and people who come back from rural Romania to jest about them still having horse and cart.

Back on topic: Horse and cart is pretty eco friendly tho :)

Norway also gets > 90% of its electricity from hydro. Electric cars are a great complement to a country that has an abundance of hydro resources.

They could export the electricity and let the electric cars get purchased in places where they’ll get driven a lot more per day...

Geographically, Norway is a bit isolated, it would take some infrastructure to export that energy to more populated places in Europe along with some transmission loss (no point in exporting to Finland and Sweden who are in a similar boat).

Traditionally Norway has exported its renewable energy surplus as energy intensive metal refinement (steel, aluminum), but more domestic use is a quicker way around the problem.

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