Norway on track to be first to go all-electric
bbc.com
bbc.com
What I’m saying is Canada has the potential to generate more hydroelectricity but environmental concerns largely delay or prevent further expansion.
But if you instead ask for "another oil producer that could fully cover it's local demand with energy sources not from hydrocarbons" a lot more nations would be included in the answer such as United Kingdom which has abundant wind, decent solar, some nuclear, and some potential hydro.
It undoubtedly provided a lot of money which helped build our infrastructure and the Netherlands wouldn't be what it is today without it - it also shows exactly what happens when the generated revenues are spent immediately. Now that the gas supply has been turned off (due to earthquakes and the government's terrible handling of those), we are scrambling to look for other streams of revenue and other gas sources (because our home heating infrastructure is largely gas based).
As someone living in Groningen, the way the government handled this is a major reason why most people I know (and myself included) have mostly lost their faith in politics and the national government as a whole.
From wikipedia:
The presumed mechanism is that while revenues increase in a growing sector (or inflows of foreign aid), the given economy's currency becomes stronger ("appreciates") compared to foreign currencies (manifested in the exchange rate). This results in the country's other exports becoming more expensive for other countries to buy, while imports become cheaper, altogether rendering those sectors less competitive.
So the Netherlands should be thankful for the Euro, which took away those effects on their local currency.
While historically true, we're approaching an era where it no longer is.
Our oil fund was set up such that the government could only ever spend at most 3% of the annual yield[1]. This seemed like a conservative approach, however it seems they didn't take into account just how large the fund would get. As such, even using less than the 3% limit, the oil fund money constitutes a large fraction of the national budget.
In the national budget for 2025, the oil money pays for 20% of non-oil expenses[2], and it's just increasing each year.
As such it does seem we're starting to get high on our own supply, just in a more roundabout way.
[1]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...
[2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/statsbudsjett/2025/statsbudsje...
[3]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...
[1]: https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energiforsyning/kraftpr...
Hydro is the first row in the table at [1], so it's 84% by capacity (second column) or 87% by typical annual production (third column).
[1] The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate: https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/kraftproduksjon/
This is a common misconception that probably stems from Norway's low population density. However, much of the country is very sparsely inhabited, and the urbanization levels are almost exactly the same as the UK's [1]. A large proportion of the population lives in multi-unit homes with limited street parking, at comparable densities to the UK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_stat...
So why does it work for Norway but not in the UK? My options are:
1. Drive to the local high power charging station and pay more than a tank of petrol for half the range.
Oh that's it.
Edit: This can be read as me telling the other guy how he should sort things where he lives. That wasn't the intention - I'm describing the situation here in Norway.
Prices fluctuates but it's been roughly steady at around 6 NOK / kWh using a supercharger[3] and 21 NOK / L at the pumps.
So to drive 100km it would cost me about 108 NOK for my EV, or 147 NOK if I had the petrol car.
Now, this changes dramatically if you can charge at home. Even during winter with high prices you'll typically not pay more than 3 NOK / kWh and typically around 1 NOK / kWh, so a fraction of the price for petrol.
edit: I should note that coops and similar can get up to 30% in subsidies from the gov't to install chargers in the common parking areas[5], so not just single home owners that can enjoy charging at home.
[1]: https://www.auto-data.net/en/renault-megane-iv-phase-ii-2020...
[2]: https://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/renault/megane_4gen/...
[3]: https://elbil.no/dette-koster-hurtiglading/
[4]: https://no.globalpetrolprices.com/Norway/gasoline_prices/
[5]: https://www.klimaoslo.no/tilskudd/ladeinfrastruktur-til-bore...
Downtown the municipality has added a lot of curb-side chargers, however pricing isn't very favorable as you have to pay for parking in addition to charging. It was a good deal for a while, not so much anymore. In general parking downtown is hard to find and expensive so not very fun, including for those who live there.
1. Higher rate of VAT on fast chargers than at home charging
2. (Not) Allowing fast chargers to qualify for money ringfenced to encourage biofuels
3. Taxes intended to clean up energy that made sense when coal was used to generate most electricity which should now be rebalanced onto gas/petrol.
Also bear in mind that Russian warmongering escalated the gas price which increased the electricity price and only homes got the price cap protection.
It's why the Netherlands (cold, cloudy, wet climate) is Europe's primary bell-pepper, tomato, cucumber etc producer all year through. It's why it's the largest producer of mushrooms worldwide. Has massive cut-flower exports all year long.
Energy for greenhouses and mushroom farms is provided for basically free. Ironically, now that the gas is (economically) finished, the government is essentially buying Russian and Norwegian gas with tax money (not literally, but through subsidies).
So your Dutch tomatoes (aside from being tasteless) or the mushrooms on your pizza are for a large part this cheap because Dutch taxpayers paid for the energy to grow them.
And if you want a bigger parallel just look at China. Their logic was really straightforward: instead of trying to catch up in an industry that’s on its way out, leapfrog and jump straight to the leading edge. Rather than spending loads of money battling well-established European players in the ICE segment for engineering and brand superiority, China poured resources into EV manufacturing and it seems it really paid out. There's no point perfecting a dying industry when you can own the future.
I've come to the conclusion that I can't know the answers and nor can anyone not involved intimately in the industry or policy (even then) so shortcut all these conversations with: buy what is best for you, don't try to predict the future.
Note on Hydro power. This may change in the future when water supply runs out due to climate heat up. They might resort to using pumps to fill the reservoirs like other countries do (it's not all green). Also depending on a certain high oil price, the use of pumps to fill the reservoirs can be a business model.
https://blog.sintef.com/energy/norwegian-pumped-storage-hydr...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
Fun fact: the consumer taxes on electricity is higher than the taxes on gasoline (the tax percentage, not the total amount paid).
It's more efficient to burn oil in a oil power plant than to make gasoline and burn it in an ICE engine. So EVs make economic sense in the long term for any country. It's just the inertia of the existing energy infrastructures holding back the transition.
> but people must stop putting pressure on others
Many countries and individuals are making a bunch of terrible excuses for why they're not transitioning to EVs, which makes absolutely no sense at all given what Norway has achieved. Norway is not THAT special. It's certainly not an ideal country for EVs. The cities there DO have apartments without off-street parking. The winter is brutal on range. Norwegians loves to drive hours and hours up to their mountain cabins in winter to ski - often with a huge ski box on top that create a lot of drag. Or they drive far down the European continent in summer, as far as Croatia for instance (to the Americans out there: Norway is part of Schengen. You can drive/travel freely anywhere in Europe without passport control)
And it makes even less sense for a country that does not have its own oil and fuel production to be dependent on ICE cars. EVs grants a path to full energy independence. ICE does not.
Of course other countries will and can not move quite as fast as Norway. The conditions are different. That goes without saying. Nobody is blaming other countries for being behind. But that's not an excuse for doing little-to-nothing to push the transition forwards.
We're already seeing gas stations in Norway that has replaced most of their pumps with fast chargers. Some of them just have one or two gas pumps left.
This is happening really fast since the people who drive the most are among the first to switch to EVs. I think sale of gasoline is falling by around 30% every year.
Nobody is letting a brand new EV gather dust in the garage as a secondary car. They're all out on the road.
Yeah, at some point you will have to plan a trip with an ICE car to make sure you find gas stations along the way.
In the really long term there won't be any gas pumps at all. Some specialty stores will probably sell gasoline and diesel in a jerry can, for enthusiasts that maintain and drive old cars for fun.
This is why I think the transition will happen much faster than people anticipate, once the market has reached a certain critical mass. Imagine what people will think when they read about gas pumps disappearing in Norway or the Netherlands and other regions with high EV adoption. The thought of not easily being able to get gasoline for your new ICE car in a decade or two will probably push people to be almost irrational in their avoidance of buying a new ICE car. Cutting the sale price won't help much.
The sale of new ICE vehicles will fall like a rock. The sale of EVs will not rise as fast as the fall of ICE. People will try to hold on to their old ICE cars for longer rather than buying a new car. Which isn't a bad thing.
I plan on holding onto Our gas car for another 6 to 10 years if I can stretch it and at that point of infrastructure is up to it I’ll get an electric one.
If everyone else switches to EVs, where will Norway get the money for its own EVs?
USA has 60x the population of Norway. So the American equivalent would be rich enough to own… 90% of all listed companies in the world!
That’s just a provocative thought experiment. But it highlights the stark difference between how nations allocate their wealth. Some have centibillionaire oligarchs and airplane carriers and space programs, others have well-managed sovereign wealth funds and universal healthcare.
Have you met people? Have you worked for the US govt or large enterprise? My gut tells me this would be a huge misallocation of funds and destructive to business if it were to be replicated in the US.
Indeed America now has "innovators capable of making humanity multi-planetary" (whom some would call egoistic oligarchs) + mostly shit government (and politicians who want to keep it that way).
Could it have taken a different path in the past to instead have well-managed national wealth and less dick-shaped chrome rockets? Would that still be possible?
This page says thay have about 1.1 Trillion dollars in Equities (after converting from NOK):
https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/all-investments/#/
Which is about 1% of the total global market cap of about 109 Trillion or so.
The other investments aren't stocks.
I wonder how long it will take though for oil demand to go down significantly.
Most countries don't have access to as much cheap and clean electricity, so it makes less sense both economically and ecologically for them.
That's false, though a common myth. Norway was already a fairly wealthy country before the discovery of oil. Norway was always fairly strong in trade, and after it got hydro-power there were already industry giants like Norsk Hydro, and there was plenty of natural resources other than oil.
Norway is surprisingly diversified for an oil nation. Just look at a breakdown of exports of Norway vs other countries where oil/gas dominate.
Qatar: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qatar_Product_Export...
Norway: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Norway_Product_Expor...
While oil/gas is a huge share of exports, since there's hundreds of various industries that's already well-established, it's not gonna be too hard for those industries to absorb the capital and labor which is freed up when the oil/gas industry winds down.
My experience with an industry outside of oil and gas in Norway, is that the industry has a growth which has been severely hampered by lack of capital and lack of labor. We could easily double in size over the span of a decade, if the capital and labor pool doubled.
It is misconception that Norway was poor before it found oil. Statistically Norway did as well as or better than – based on GNP per capita – most other European countries from 1830-1938; similar to Germany, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...
This question doesn't even make sense. EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership. There are clear signs that we will soon see EVs that are outright cheaper to buy than ICE, and that replacing a battery will be cheaper than replacing an ICE engine.
This whole EV transition isn't something that's costing Norway money. It's an investment which is already paying huge dividends.
Norway is now building the worlds largest undersea tunnel, and they found that due to the high share of EVs in Norway, they could save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation. There are lots of examples like this.
The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire. While each EV fire takes a bit more work to put out, it's not 10-20 more work than an ICE.
Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
You should also know that Norway's economy is surprisingly diversified for an oil nation. Norway was fairly wealthy before oil, and will still be wealthy after oil. There are still huge natural resources (hydropower, fishing, etc), a fair amount of industry and manufacturing (Hydro, Yara, ..), a decent tech sector. And after all, a lot of the profits from the fossil fuel extraction has been put into one of the worlds largest sovereign wealth funds, which could be used to help bootstrap more industry in the transition away from oil.
I think the question makes total sense, as does your reply. :-)
> EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership
Are you talking about Norway or in general? Because overall I highly doubt that if we're talking about US/EU markets. In Norway EVs are heavily subsidized and ICEs are on the contrary taxed, so this might be true there. But in Europe ICE cars of comparable class are probably cheaper when looking at TCO, especially given abysmal depreciation of EV batteries. From quick googling it seems that EVs are _sometimes_ cheaper when one factors in tax cuts and/or subsidies and only on the horizon of ~4 years +- one year. Given the average lifetime of a car of ~10 years (now closer to 12), EV will be much, much more expensive than ICE when averaged across population.
EVs are cheaper than ICE cars in China or if they are imported from China without tariffs. Do we really want to go that way?
> save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation
> The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire
These sound like a rounding error when estimating net effects of EV vs ICE.
> Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
Norway always had exceptionally clean air. I think that this impact is not measurable.
If we get to a world where fossil fuels are worthless, then society as a whole will likely be in a world unrecognizable from our own, and problems would likely be thought of in a different way.
That problem seems sadly so far away in the future, that Norway likely would not need to worry about it, even if they wouldn't have meaningful industry otherwise already.
> Annual emissions from the combustion of exported Norwegian oil and gas are approximately 500 million tons of CO2, which is at least ten times higher than Norway’s annual domestic emissions
https://www.nhri.no/en/report/canary-in-the-coal-mine/5-norw...
They're much smarter than other countries with similar populations and exporting as much oil though (Kuwait, UAE), but clearly it's a cheat code in Europe
How do they deal with it?
Also, an EV never fails to start in cold weather. Which is a definite plus.