“Not in My Back Yard” - NIMBY Norway will remove vehicle emissions by 2025 – including emissions from construction vehicles and passenger ferries – a snapshot of how

From this 19 minute video about Oslo:

How Oslo’s electric evolution will shock the world by 2030 (freethink.com)

Looks like a miracle when compared to the efforts of other cities and countries highlighted here:

The People Promising Us 'Net Zero' Are Clueless About Energy Storage - Climate Change Dispatch

The passenger ferries recharge (from the mains) in a few minutes – sufficient for one hours operation. Some of the construction vehicles are directly plugged into the mains supply and trail a power chord. Note: any battery fires on the ferries cannot be extinguished, only contained with water mist, until specialist fire fighters turn up (battery powered fire trucks?).

Lots of golf carts used by the postal service and pizza delivery companies! The batteries for these can be swapped out with remarkable ease – most impressive.

Let’s look a little deeper to see if the miracle stands up tp scrutiny and can be applied elsewhere.

Norway is a country of around 5.5 million people. It has made the most of natural advantages, such as hydro power and supplemented them with wind and solar.

Norway has a significant amount of immigration with over a million Norwegians with parents born outside Norway.

Demographics of Norway - Wikipedia

“At the start of 2022, there were 819,356 immigrants and 205,819 Norwegian-born to immigrant parents in Norway, together constituting 18.9% of the total population.^[1”

Here is the energy production of Norway over time:

Electricity (ssb.no)

Generation, imports, exports and consumption of electricity. GWh

Total energy production is up 20% from 121.4 in 2006 to 145.9 over the last 17 years. Norway’s population was 4.7 million in 2006 v 5.5 million now = +17% - so around 3% more energy per capita.

The net consumption column is not displayed on a single page, so here are the numbers for a few selected years.

2013 = 111 100

2019 = 126 051

2022 = 125 154

An extra 14-Gigawatt hours (12%) in energy consumption over the last ten years sourced from an extra 7-GWh from hydro and the bulk from 14-GWh from wind. A slight reduction in net energy consumption in the last three years.

Interestingly, Hydro output was significantly cranked up over the first two years of the C19 pandemic but dialled down during the 2022 Ukraine war year.

Imports of energy halved over 2020 and 2021 , but exports doubled. Interesting energy consumption shifts. Energy imports have recovered in 2022 tp match wind energy.

Norway has long significantly subsidized EV’s in all osrts of ways, from zero taxes to free parking. These subsidies and tax breaks are being removed. Here is the current EV “market penetration”.

Norway's Auto Sales Hit 60-Year Low After Tax Increases - CleanTechnica

I went to Norway to see an EV paradise, but I found so much more (electrek.co)

It looks like around 20% of cars in Norway are EV’s with 80% of new registrations – which makes for a large number of ICE vehicles about to be shipped out of the country to flood the second hand markets elsewhere.

Sounds like a very large business opportunity to either scrap, sell or come up with ways to recycle car “bits”!

Here’s the price of electricity navigating through here:

09363: Electricity prices in the wholesale market, by type of contract (øre/kWh) 2012K1 - 2023K1. Statbank Norway (ssb.no)

VAT is about a 1,000 NOK (1 USD = 7 Norwegian Krone).

Quite the jump! Up 180% in five years, even allowing for some pull back from the first quarter of 2022 peak.

And here’s where the rubber hits the road.

Why are electricity prices so high when there is so much “free” hydro and wind energy available whilst the use of Norway’s massive hydrocarbon fuels (oil and gas) for domestic energy consumption is almost zero? Surely, prices should be going DOWN not up!!!

What is the NET HARM TO PLANET EARTH of the extensive build out of wind farms and battery powered vehicles. Cobalt open cast mining using child slave labour? Not something you will find discussed in any Norwegian government publication I am guessing!

How about the “contradiction” or “hypocrisy” of supplying hydrocarbon fuels elsewhere whilst claiming to be “green”? The UK has always been a big customer of Norway – it imports hydrocarbon fuels and exports the pollution they cause back to Norway via prevailing winds!

Enquiring minds want to know why Norway simply meets its 2030 “Net Zero” targets by simply ceasing to supply hydrocarbons!?!

As a side note, Norway accumulates the revenues it receives from hydrocarbon sales into what is euphemistically called “

Norway’s GPFG returns -14% in 2022 - European Pensions

Fund Performance - regjeringen.no

Not such a good year, along with every other major global investor, rising interest rates and falling equity markets caused a loss of one krone in seven! There will have been some recovery this year and revenues from hydrocarbon sales made up for the losses.

“Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) returned -14.2 per cent in 2022, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) has revealed. This is equivalent to NOK 1,637bn of losses, bringing the fund’s value to NOK 12,429bn, as at 31 December 2022.”

The “Government Pension Fund Global” is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund - back over 15 trillion NOK (over 2 trillion USD - even exceeding the Swiss National Bank which sells fiat Swiss Francs to buy global equities.

The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)

How are Norway’s government finances doing?

Well, not so good, but a lot better than many countries.

Norway Raises Oil Wealth Spending to Shield Welfare Services - Bloomberg

Key figures in the Revised National Budget 2023 - regjeringen.no

“The government proposes to increase the structural non-oil fiscal deficit by NOK 56 billion compared to the original budget, to NOK 372.6 billion. “

“The structural non-oil fiscal deficit corresponds to 3.0 per cent of the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) at the start of the year. “

Wait, what? The GPFG is external to government finances? Well, maybe more of a rainy day fund.

373 billion deficit = around 68,000 NOK per capita for 5.5 million “capitas”. A little under 10,000 bucks per capita.

That would be the equivalent of USD 3.34 trillion bucks for the US v the projected 1/5 trillion for the US. An Update to the Budget Outlook: 2023 to 2033 | Congressional Budget Office (cbo.gov)

Onwards!

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