Life Imitating Art With Norway's 2025 Fossil-Fuel Vehicle Ban?
Elon Musk tweeted his joy when a Norwegian paper announced a proposed ban of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles in the nordic country by 2025.
The proposal itself is built upon good intentions. By eliminating sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, tailpipe emissions will slowly reduce. The country is famously energy independent, thanks to massive offshore oil reserves, which can be converted into hydrogen or used to generate electricity. And electric vehicles are increasingly popular in the country thanks to massive incentives funded by oil exports.
The proposal has me wondering about something else entirely: could the fossil-fuel-vehicle ban have serious political ramifications in Europe? Norwegian serial drama Okkupert — Occupied in English — might have some answers.
The premise of the series: Norway decides to turn off the oil tap to the rest of Europe. The European Union says, “Nah, we still want that,” and Russia installs itself as Norway’s overseer via a velvet glove occupation.
Now, I’m not saying that Russia is going to takeover Norway because a few political parties in the nordic nation want to ban the sale fossil-fuel vehicles. However, this may be the tip of a very interesting iceberg.
Norway’s economy dependent on oil and gas revenues. Unlike other nations, Norway has been incredibly smart and conservative with its resources, and national oil company Statoil directly employs some 27,000 employees. While it reaps the benefits of those reserves, Norway has heavily invested in the private ownership of electric vehicles through massive incentives, far more so than any state or federal government in the United States.
So, in the future, should the rest of Europe decide similar measures be part of its collective future, how will Norway — one of the largest exporters of energy to the rest of Europe — sustain itself? Are the four political parties as part of this agreement pushing a snowball from the top of a mountain? Will it get bigger and bigger in size to the point where Norway’s economic crutch, the export of oil, is no longer be profitable if the rest of Europe follows Norway down this political path?
This will be an interesting story to watch — especially from afar.
[Image: Yellow Bird]
More by Mark Stevenson
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- FreedMike Meanwhile...Tesla's market share and YTD sales continue to decline, in an EV market that just set yet another quarterly sales record. Earth to Musk: stop with the political blather, stop with the pie-in-the-sky product promises, and start figuring out how to do a better job growing your business with good solid product that people want. Instead of a $30,000 self driving taxi that depends on all kinds of tech that isn't anywhere near ready for prime time, how about a $30,000 basic EV that depends on tech you already perfected? That will build your business; showing up at Trump rallies won't.
- 28-Cars-Later "Here in Washington state they want to pass a law dictating what tires you can buy or not." Uh, waht?
- Tassos NEVER. All season tires are perfectly adequate here in the Snowbelt MI. EVEN if none of my cars have FWD or AWD or 4WD but the most challenging of all, RWD, as all REAL cars should.
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- 1995 SC I remember when Elon could do no wrong. Then we learned his politics and he can now do no right. And we is SpaceX always left out of his list of companies?
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Ehhhh..... I can see where Norway can envision a future where they export more oil someday because they concentrate on EV's fueled by hydro power and natural gas fired combined cycle power plants. Maybe yes, maybe no. Lots of things can change in eight or ten years.
If Norway were truly committed to a world without fossil fuels, they would stop pumping the evil oil, but that's the only thing keeping the place afloat. Can you imagine what that would do to Norway's economy? It's basically a Nordic Saudi Arabia that has developed zero industry outside of oil and fishing. They would rather just virtue signal with laws like this than actually make real sacrifices. The moral superiority is what drives them. I'll believe they are committed when they stop pumping oil from the North Sea. I wonder how much the Earth will cool when this law takes effect?