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Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there.
by walthamstow 7mo ago
Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there.
- reverius42 7mo ago> hydro energy resources What is a hydro energy resource, a river? Don't lots of countries have rivers? (If we're talking about hydroelectric power plants they've chosen to build, that's not exactly a resource -- and other countries could choose to build those too, right?)
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- lukan 7mo agoNorway has really a lots of rivers with lots of potential energy of the water, since it comes from the mountains at high altitude (Fjords). Some big slow moving river in a flat land on the other hand is not helping you here.
- theappsecguy 7mo agoBuilding hydro energy requires a very specific geography. You can't just take any river and turn it into an efficient hydroplant.
- ascorbic 7mo agoYou need both the right geography and a lack of either people or democracy in the place you want to build it. That rules out new large hydro projects in most of Europe.
- margalabargala 7mo agoNot just a river, a river plus either an elevation drop or a drownable valley. A river winding along a flat plain is not a hydro energy resource. A river in the same valley as your capital city is not a hydro energy resource.
- ascorbic 7mo agoMore importantly it's one of the richest countries in the world, and has high taxes but big tax breaks for EVs.
- jacquesm 7mo agoAnd strongly penalizes non-EVs.
- onraglanroad 7mo agoNorway has roughly the population of the average US state. So I guess no-one really lives in the USA.
- kypro 7mo ago0.1% of the population is pretty close to 0% to be fair.
- Amezarak 7mo agoLet's put it more concretely: Norway has about the same amount of people as Alabama.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoSo nobody lives in Alabama
- skeeter2020 7mo agoI understand that you're being intentionally difficult, and probably think it's quite clever, but clear to the rest of us that the original point was that Norway is an extreme outlier with their immense (oil) wealth, hydroelectricity generation and tiny population density.
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoPeople love to compare the US to an individual country, rather than a continent. Compare a country to a state if you want to be honest.
- warmwaffles 7mo agoThe crazier fact is that a hand full of cities alone in the US has a higher population than all of Norway.
- throwaway5752 7mo agoAnd massive oil resources. As a result of this, one of the wealthiest sovereign wealth funds on the planet, which they manage well and for the good of the country. Their hydro energy company is an aluminum company company, they have so much slack power they export it refining bauxite. It is worth repeating solar panels covering an area about the size of NH generate enough power to supply all current entire US energy needs.
- Nition 7mo agoThere must be more to it than this, or we'd have fantastic EV uptake here in New Zealand (we don't - EVs currently only have a 6% market share).
- walthamstow 7mo agoAs other siblings have said, it's also very rich and offers mega tax breaks for EVs. Out of interest, do you mean 6% of cars on the road of 6% of new cars sold last year?
- Nition 7mo agoI mean sales, specifically new car pure EV sales for 2025. We are only at 3% EVs on the road. I think for much of the population a brand new EV is simply too expensive.
- tormeh 7mo agoTbf a plug-in is just an EV that somehow runs on petrol 4 times a year. In practice the vast majority of driving is done on battery power.
- Nition 7mo agoIf you include PHEVs along with pure EVs the total is around 12% total sales for 2025, and 4% total on the road. I'm not sure when PHEVs became available overseas but they haven't been an option here for that long. Heaps of hybrids are being sold but for now still mostly of the traditional non-plug-in type. As alliao says, this is partly because of the way road user charges (RUC) currently work, though that is slated to change in the future.
- seanmcdirmid 7mo agoHybrids and PHEVs are more complicated given that they are both ICEs and EVs. A pure EV is much cheaper, and many places in the developing world don't have easy access to oil anyways.
- speedgoose 7mo agoSolar and wind is cheap too, no need to attack the Middle East.
- designerarvid 7mo agoAnd lots of bad conscious from all the oil.
- robocat 7mo ago> massive hydro energy resources That is irrelevant unless Norway has unused capacity. If a country adds electric cars using more electric power, then what really matters is how that extra power is generated. It gets weird in Europe because adding extra load in Norway could easily mean that Poland does more generation using coal. I'm in New Zealand where the government owned generators are preventing solar installations. One example was via an unobvious regulation that the installation had to handle massively overengineered earthquake rules. Meanwhile we use coal or imported gas when the isn't enough rain for our hydro. And we waste about 10% of our total capacity exporting (via one aluminium plant).
- grumbelbart2 7mo agoGoing all electric with cars would add ~10-15% of electric demand. That's a bit, but not really a deal breaker, and something Norway would easily be able to offset by adding more wind turbines.
- robocat 7mo agoI tried to find info on whether Norway is adding green generation capacity. Closest answer I got is that they have stopped adding onshore wind and solar is still negligible.