While Donald Trump is making plans for drastic funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) here in the United States, other countries are ramping up the fight against vehicle emissions. Norway, already in the vanguard, recently announced a new goal in its effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels in cars. By 2025, the Norwegian government said it hopes to see 100 percent of new-car sales come from zero- or low-emission vehicles. The country’s government plans to achieve this through a tax plan, not a ban.
According to the release from the Norwegian EV Association, electric vehicles took 22 percent of the market in Norway in 2015 (for comparison, they currently make up only about 0.5 percent of U.S. vehicle sales). This impressive number is largely due to incentives the country has been doling out as far back as 1990 that include discounts on taxes (including exemption from a 25 percent VAT purchase tax), access to bus lanes, free parking, and exemption from tolls. Norway wants to continue pushing this directive with a “polluter pays” principle that incentivizes buying an electric, hydrogen, or plug-in hybrid automobile instead of a gasoline or diesel vehicle. Basically, gasoline or diesel vehicles would be taxed much more heavily than zero- or low-emission cars. With this tax system, the country believes eliminating sales of traditional gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles is possible in as little as eight years.
This bolsters Norway’s participation in what’s known as the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance, which includes five countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Quebec) that have already set ambitious emissions goals. All five say their goal is to have every passenger vehicle be a ZEV by 2050.
In order to deal with this drastic uptick in electric vehicles on the road, Norway will need to beef up its network of charging stations quickly. If the country is going to fall in line with the recommendation from the European Commission’s Clean Power for Transport strategy—one charging station for every 10 EVs—Norway would need about 25,000 public electric-vehicle charging ports by 2020. There were only 1350 in 2015, so there’s plenty of work to be done. Parliament also has a program in place to put in place at least two fast-charging stations per 31 miles on all major roads by the end of the year.
These plans and goals are, of course, highly ambitious, but it’s probably what it will take to achieve the seismic shift Norway is looking for.
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