Another one chimes in – we must prohibit personal driving:
Looking to the future, TØI’s Grimsrud hopes that Norway’s next 12-year National Transport Plan beginning in 2025 will include a goal of limiting total driving, which could restrain highway expansion plans and direct more investment toward transit. “If you start with a national goal for reducing transportation emissions, it will force you to focus more on public transportation and less on road construction,” he said.
Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts (msn.com)
But note, like the U.S., they don’t know what the priority goal is – Reducing carbon emissions? Reducing total number of cars? Promoting equality?
For other countries, a clear Norwegian lesson is that a focus on reducing transportation emissions through electric car adoption can worsen inequality. Capping the price of eligible vehicles and limiting the number of EVs that a household can purchase tax-free are intuitive moves that Norway took only belatedly.
Also – 99% of electricity in Norway comes from plentiful hydropower – owing to their unique topography and climate. What works for Norway will not work for many or most countries. Second, Norway has deeply subsidized the purchase of EVs – and the subsidies are funded by Norway’s oil industry infrastructure, oddly enough. They have to sell a lot of oil, which makes more emissions, to remove fewer carbon emissions via EVs – it’s kinda odd.
The media has been funny – until weeks ago, EVs are the future! Then they spun on a dime, no one wants EVs, EVs are not selling, the charging networks don’t work – blah blah blah.
Disclosure #1: I’m not down on Norway. In fact, Jeg studerer Norsk og snakke litt Norsk – am studying hard to get better at it.
Disclosure #2: I have an EV but I try to be realistic. At some point, I’ll write a post about that. EVs are good for many things, not good for many things (like towing a heavy trailer to a remote campsite on USFS or BLM lands where there is no electricity for re-charging), and questionable for applications like farming. During harvest, the equipment may be running 16+ hours per day, and not co-located with supercharging infrastructure. Not seeing how EVs replace a lot of farm equipment. All topics for another day.
