9 ms·

Oil Is Hard to Quit, Even in Norway Where Electric Cars Rule

68 points by marc__1 3y ago

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
This article from late 2022 has good graphs on the data, including how sales translate to fleets, fleets translate to distance driven and how distance driven correlates with gasoline purchases. "Norway’s Vehicle Fleet Transitions To Electric — How Long Will It Take?" https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-transitions-to-electric-how-long-will-it-take/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-t... Short version, gasoline use has dipped, and it's about to crash.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
TL; DR "After years of subsidies, more than a fifth of Norway’s automobile fleet is now battery powered. As a result, gasoline use has fallen by 37% since 2013, according to data from Eurostat... Though electric cars accounted for 23% of miles driven in Norway in 2022, diesel still accounted for 43% of the distance covered. Heavier trucks, which for technological reasons haven’t seen widespread adoption of electric drive trains, are still predominantly running on diesel, Norwegian Road Federation Director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in an interview. Diesel consumption in Norway is just 10% below its 2015 peak and has yet to show a consistent downtrend, with demand rebounding since 2020, according to data from Statistics Norway. It’s a similar story for aviation."
- runako 3y ago
  > just 10% below its 2015 peak "just" 10%?!? Would be nice to replicate that in other countries. > diesel still accounted for 43% of the distance covered I wonder if this is an artifact of the early push to build EVs with tiny batteries (e.g. <= 100mi of range).
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    It is, average miles driven in ICE are dropping while average miles driven in EVs is rising. I believe they crossed over last year and there's a couple of graphs somewhere halfway down this page that shows it clearly: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-transitions-to-electric-how-long-will-it-take/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-t...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
_aavaa_ 3y ago
Another equally viable title, one which does not involve as much fear, would be: "Norways' gasoline use down 37% since 2013 as over 1/5th of cars now electric" Their point of heavier trucks, trains, and planes not going electric yet is true, they're simply higher up the difficulty curve. The electric trucks are starting to roll out, from the bottom of the range and working up.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Heavy trucks is probably where green hydrogen makes sense unless you want 10 ton behemoths destroying roads annually (considering impact of construction costs etc.)
  - bodyfour 3y ago
    and/or add overhead power delivery to major motorways, allowing trucks to have (relatively) small batteries for the non-motorway parts of their journeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    Those can already run on batteries. Australia has some electrified road trains that are 165 tonnes, way more than is allowed on roads in most countries. Brutally simple solution with batteries that can be swapped in a few minutes. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-worlds-first-electric-triple-road-train-with-swappable-battery/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-wo... Hydrogen is likely never going to be very popular for road transport. It's way more costly than battery electric to operate and most transport companies deeply care about their margins. Besides that, the infrastructure simply isn't there for hydrogen (never mind green hydrogen). And the battery equivalents are already being used on roads right now in pretty much any weight class. High speed megawatt chargers are already being developed. And with swapping batteries the whole argument against having to wait goes away.
    - _hypx 3y ago
ryzvonusef 3y ago
Isn't the first step Reduce? Any reduction in petroleum usage is good, removal of urban emissions is better. Diesel trucks operate mostly on the motorway and they can get a good speed there, creating more efficiency. (unlike American big rigs, Euro-trucks are smaller and more efficient, from what I recall.) Cars meanwhile drive locally, pollute where you breathe, and with stat/stop traffic are not efficient consumers of fuel.
- rob74 3y ago
  Plus truck emissions can be reduced by transporting more cargo by rail. Then trucks can be used only for the "last miles", which makes electric drive more feasible.
seltzered_ 3y ago
Haven't read the article yet but this reminded me of a chart arguably showing Norway's oil use has actually gone up: https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I possibly agree with his point but those graphs are bad. The first one is flat, it only looks like it's going up and down because the axis doesn't start at 0. The second on is looking at sales when oil use is realted to fleet mileage. The later is going in the right direction but naturally lags sales.
LatteLazy 3y ago
No one is quitting oil this decade. All this navel gazing over how hard or easy it would be to do and whether we should use bikes or hydrogen or the power of dreams is just a weird pretense. It honestly makes me think more and more about Don't Look Up
- vman81 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I did. At least, I am no longer buying 400L of oil for my furnace every month, and our cars are cheap(ish) EVs. So at least for direct oil usage I went to zero.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    And all the plastics you use?
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    My friend. For everyone like you, there are 2 people in China and another in India who JUST got rich enough to buy their first (low mpg / kpl) vehicle :(
    - ericd 3y ago
      From what I can tell, it seems like the Chinese are doing a pretty good job making EVs affordable for their populace. And you’d be stunned at the huge numbers of e-bikes/scooters they’ve been using for the last decade+. Swarms of those things, almost silent. It’s pretty cool to witness.
      - LatteLazy 3y ago
        In Mao's time everyone got a bike, and that was a huge advance. Today everyone get's a car. Some might be EVs (fueled by coal power) but others are not. And every year world CO2e emissions go up. And every day we pretend it's ok because it went up by less that it would have if we had put it up even more. But we need them to come down, not just go up less quickly. And we needed that in 2000. Not "we might manage it in 2030".
breakingrules 3y ago
[dead]
georgeg23 3y ago
The fact is, Norway drills and exports more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia.[1] Their wealth and ability to buy electric cars at home is largely dependent on that massive oil income. They don't refine oil locally and would have to buy back gasoline, so electric cars still make economic sense too. Norway is a beautiful country that the rest of the world often tries to emulate, but their economy is rooted in a darker side. [1] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/Production/Per-capita https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...
- ubercore 3y ago
  Best I can find is about 17% of GDP in Norway is from Oil and Gas. While that per capita number is high, it's not Saudi Arabia levels.
  - dmoy 3y ago
    > Best I can find is about 17% of GDP in Norway is from Oil and Gas. While that per capita number is high, it's not Saudi Arabia levels. Per capita doesn't mean % of GDP though. It means relative to the population. Norway exports like $50B / yr of petroleum (and another $120B of natural gas). Saudi Arabia exports like $170B / yr of petroleum. Saudi Arabia population is like 7x larger, so per Capita oil and gas is larger in Norway even if you subtract out all the natural gas.
    - ubercore 3y ago
      Right I'm just suggesting per capita isn't necessarily the best way to talk about how important oil is to Norway's economony.
  - swexbe 3y ago
    1. Make $100 from selling oil. 2. Use the money to buy other local services. There, now your GDP is just 50% oil.
    - magicalhippo 3y ago
valine 3y ago
The next obvious step is to transition short haul trucks to electric, and then slowly ramp up the range. Tesla Semi is a decent proof of concept to show that fuel savings can offset the cost of the massive batteries, at least for shorter trips. The other option for long haul trucking is hydrogen. In the short term that's probably more realistic than full electric. We are absolutely making progress towards eliminating emissions for all vehicle types, its just taking longer than most would like.
timeon 3y ago
Are boats included in the data here?
guerby 3y ago
https://archive.is/CUCCH https://archive.is/CUCCH

68 points by marc__1 3y ago

This article from late 2022 has good graphs on the data, including how sales translate to fleets, fleets translate to distance driven and how distance driven correlates with gasoline purchases. "Norway’s Vehicle Fleet Transitions To Electric — How Long Will It Take?" https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-transitions-to-electric-how-long-will-it-take/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-t... Short version, gasoline use has dipped, and it's about to crash.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

TL; DR "After years of subsidies, more than a fifth of Norway’s automobile fleet is now battery powered. As a result, gasoline use has fallen by 37% since 2013, according to data from Eurostat... Though electric cars accounted for 23% of miles driven in Norway in 2022, diesel still accounted for 43% of the distance covered. Heavier trucks, which for technological reasons haven’t seen widespread adoption of electric drive trains, are still predominantly running on diesel, Norwegian Road Federation Director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in an interview. Diesel consumption in Norway is just 10% below its 2015 peak and has yet to show a consistent downtrend, with demand rebounding since 2020, according to data from Statistics Norway. It’s a similar story for aviation."

runako 3y ago
> just 10% below its 2015 peak "just" 10%?!? Would be nice to replicate that in other countries. > diesel still accounted for 43% of the distance covered I wonder if this is an artifact of the early push to build EVs with tiny batteries (e.g. <= 100mi of range).
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  It is, average miles driven in ICE are dropping while average miles driven in EVs is rising. I believe they crossed over last year and there's a couple of graphs somewhere halfway down this page that shows it clearly: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-transitions-to-electric-how-long-will-it-take/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/25/norways-vehicle-fleet-t...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

_aavaa_ 3y ago

Another equally viable title, one which does not involve as much fear, would be: "Norways' gasoline use down 37% since 2013 as over 1/5th of cars now electric" Their point of heavier trucks, trains, and planes not going electric yet is true, they're simply higher up the difficulty curve. The electric trucks are starting to roll out, from the bottom of the range and working up.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Heavy trucks is probably where green hydrogen makes sense unless you want 10 ton behemoths destroying roads annually (considering impact of construction costs etc.)
- bodyfour 3y ago
  and/or add overhead power delivery to major motorways, allowing trucks to have (relatively) small batteries for the non-motorway parts of their journeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Those can already run on batteries. Australia has some electrified road trains that are 165 tonnes, way more than is allowed on roads in most countries. Brutally simple solution with batteries that can be swapped in a few minutes. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-worlds-first-electric-triple-road-train-with-swappable-battery/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-wo... Hydrogen is likely never going to be very popular for road transport. It's way more costly than battery electric to operate and most transport companies deeply care about their margins. Besides that, the infrastructure simply isn't there for hydrogen (never mind green hydrogen). And the battery equivalents are already being used on roads right now in pretty much any weight class. High speed megawatt chargers are already being developed. And with swapping batteries the whole argument against having to wait goes away.
  - _hypx 3y ago

ryzvonusef 3y ago

Isn't the first step Reduce? Any reduction in petroleum usage is good, removal of urban emissions is better. Diesel trucks operate mostly on the motorway and they can get a good speed there, creating more efficiency. (unlike American big rigs, Euro-trucks are smaller and more efficient, from what I recall.) Cars meanwhile drive locally, pollute where you breathe, and with stat/stop traffic are not efficient consumers of fuel.

rob74 3y ago
Plus truck emissions can be reduced by transporting more cargo by rail. Then trucks can be used only for the "last miles", which makes electric drive more feasible.

seltzered_ 3y ago

Haven't read the article yet but this reminded me of a chart arguably showing Norway's oil use has actually gone up: https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I possibly agree with his point but those graphs are bad. The first one is flat, it only looks like it's going up and down because the axis doesn't start at 0. The second on is looking at sales when oil use is realted to fleet mileage. The later is going in the right direction but naturally lags sales.

LatteLazy 3y ago

No one is quitting oil this decade. All this navel gazing over how hard or easy it would be to do and whether we should use bikes or hydrogen or the power of dreams is just a weird pretense. It honestly makes me think more and more about Don't Look Up

vman81 3y ago
Anecdotally, I did. At least, I am no longer buying 400L of oil for my furnace every month, and our cars are cheap(ish) EVs. So at least for direct oil usage I went to zero.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  And all the plastics you use?
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  My friend. For everyone like you, there are 2 people in China and another in India who JUST got rich enough to buy their first (low mpg / kpl) vehicle :(
  - ericd 3y ago
    From what I can tell, it seems like the Chinese are doing a pretty good job making EVs affordable for their populace. And you’d be stunned at the huge numbers of e-bikes/scooters they’ve been using for the last decade+. Swarms of those things, almost silent. It’s pretty cool to witness.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      In Mao's time everyone got a bike, and that was a huge advance. Today everyone get's a car. Some might be EVs (fueled by coal power) but others are not. And every year world CO2e emissions go up. And every day we pretend it's ok because it went up by less that it would have if we had put it up even more. But we need them to come down, not just go up less quickly. And we needed that in 2000. Not "we might manage it in 2030".

breakingrules 3y ago

[dead]

georgeg23 3y ago

The fact is, Norway drills and exports more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia.[1] Their wealth and ability to buy electric cars at home is largely dependent on that massive oil income. They don't refine oil locally and would have to buy back gasoline, so electric cars still make economic sense too. Norway is a beautiful country that the rest of the world often tries to emulate, but their economy is rooted in a darker side. [1] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/Production/Per-capita https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...

ubercore 3y ago
Best I can find is about 17% of GDP in Norway is from Oil and Gas. While that per capita number is high, it's not Saudi Arabia levels.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > Best I can find is about 17% of GDP in Norway is from Oil and Gas. While that per capita number is high, it's not Saudi Arabia levels. Per capita doesn't mean % of GDP though. It means relative to the population. Norway exports like $50B / yr of petroleum (and another $120B of natural gas). Saudi Arabia exports like $170B / yr of petroleum. Saudi Arabia population is like 7x larger, so per Capita oil and gas is larger in Norway even if you subtract out all the natural gas.
  - ubercore 3y ago
    Right I'm just suggesting per capita isn't necessarily the best way to talk about how important oil is to Norway's economony.
- swexbe 3y ago
  1. Make $100 from selling oil. 2. Use the money to buy other local services. There, now your GDP is just 50% oil.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago

valine 3y ago

The next obvious step is to transition short haul trucks to electric, and then slowly ramp up the range. Tesla Semi is a decent proof of concept to show that fuel savings can offset the cost of the massive batteries, at least for shorter trips. The other option for long haul trucking is hydrogen. In the short term that's probably more realistic than full electric. We are absolutely making progress towards eliminating emissions for all vehicle types, its just taking longer than most would like.

timeon 3y ago

Are boats included in the data here?

guerby 3y ago

https://archive.is/CUCCH https://archive.is/CUCCH