Undersea power cable from Norway to UK

 From the BBC

The world's longest under-sea electricity cable, transferring green power between Norway and the UK, has begun operation.  The 450-mile (725km) cable connects Blyth in Northumberland with the Norwegian village of Kvilldal.

At full 1,400 megawatt capacity it will import enough hydro-power to supply 1.4 million homes, National Grid said.

National Grid Ventures president Cordi O'Hara said it was a "remarkable feat of engineering".

She added: "We had to go through mountains, fjords and across the North Sea to make this happen. North Sea Link (NSL) is also a great example of two countries working together to maximise their renewable energy resources for mutual benefit."

National Grid said the €1.6bn (£1.37bn) joint venture with Norwegian power operator Statnett would help the UK reduce carbon emissions by 23 million tonnes by 2030.

It has four other power cables running to Belgium, France and the Netherlands and said 90% of energy imported in this way would be from zero carbon sources by 2030.

Hydropower in Norway and wind power in the UK are subject to weather conditions and fluctuations in demand.  Using NSL, renewable power can be exported from the UK when wind generation is high and electricity demand low, or be imported from Norway when demand is high and wind generation low.

Specially designed barges were used in the construction of North Sea Link

Petrol/diesel cars now just 10% of sales in Norway

 From a Twitter feed by Glen Peters

10% of new car sales in Norway in 2021 have been diesel or petrol. Let that sink in.

It is normal to buy an electric car in Norway, an outlier to buy diesel or petrol. With policies, things can go fast.

10 years ago, EVs were really expensive compared to petrol/diesel cars.  Now they're on the verge of price parity.  So Norway had to start the transition with incentives.  For example, plug-in cars were exempt from sales tax.  In other countries without incentives, such as Australia, the shift is starting now.  But if substantial incentives were introduced, the shift which took 10 years in Norway could happen in 5.  

We are not helpless against the climate emergency. 

Was Norway poor before oil?

 From  Twitter thread by Robbie Andrew

I keep hearing from Norwegians that Norway was a poor country before the oil age. Where does this idea come from, and what were African countries at the time if Norway was poor?

Norway's GDP per capita before oil was discovered in 1969 was at the median of OECD members. Poor?

Is it simply that Norway was not quite as rich as Sweden, which is where Norwegians always looked to?

Or is it difficult to think that even when income was one-eighth of today's (extraordinary) level, the country was nevertheless rich?

Where does the myth that Norway was poor come from, and why does it persist?

Disclosure:  I am currently learning Norwegian via Duolingo.

Record heat in the Arctic circle

The midnight sun shines at the border area between Finland and Norway in Kilpisjarvi, Enontekio, Finland, on June 22, 2020. Finland’s national meteorological institute has registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844. Photograph: LEHTIKUVA/Reuters

From The Guardian:

 

Nordic countries have registered near-record temperatures over the weekend, including highs of 34C (93.2F) in some places.

The latest figures came after Finland’s national meteorological institute registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844.

Kevo, in Lapland, recorded heat of 33.6C (92.5F) on Sunday, the hottest day since 1914 when authorities registered 34.7C (94.5F), said the STT news agency. Several parts of Sweden also reported record highs for June.

The high temperatures follow the record-breaking heatwave and wildfires that have caused devastation in parts of North America.

The intense heatwave has killed 95 people in the US state of Oregon alone, its governor said on Sunday. Hundreds are believed to have died from the heat in the US north-west and south-western Canada.

Michael Reeder, a professor of meteorology in the school of Earth, atmosphere and environment at Australia’s Monash University, said the events on the European and North American continents were not unlinked.

Reeder has written about the meteorological conditions that allowed for the North American heatwave to form. He said a tropical low in the western Pacific, near Japan, had disturbed the atmosphere, creating ripples around the hemisphere as what is known as a Rossby wave.

That wave broke off the west of Canada, triggering the conditions for the heatwave.

“It’s like plucking a guitar string. The disturbance propagated along the jet stream,” Reeder said.

“It gets to North America, it (amplified) and produced a big high pressure system in the middle part of the atmosphere.”

He said that had then kicked off another wave over the north Atlantic that then broke and produced the conditions for high temperatures in the Nordic regions.

“So from that perspective, the high temperatures over Scandinavia are directly linked to what happened in North America.”

From LiveScience:

On the summer solstice (June 20 — the longest day of the year) two European Union satellites recorded a scorching temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius ) on the ground in Arctic Siberia.

This isn't quite a new heat record; as a post on the EU's Copernicus satellite website noted, this egg-boiling temperature was detected only on the ground in Siberia's Sakha Republic, while the region's air temperature (the temperature people would actually feel while walking around) was a toasty 86 F (30 C).

However, that's still an anomalously high temperature for the Arctic Circle — and one that could exacerbate the region's melting permafrost, which is the only thing preventing ancient caches of greenhouse gases from reentering Earth's atmosphere, according to Gizmodo.

The EU's Copernicus Sentinal-3A and 3B satellites recorded the high temperatures in the midst of an ongoing heat wave over much of Siberia. The heat spike is, unfortunately, a predictable start to summer, following a spring that saw hundreds of wildfires scorching the Siberian countryside and blacking out major cities with blankets of smoke.

Many of these spring fires were "zombie fires," so named because they are thought to be the rekindled remains of wildfires that ignited the previous summer and were never fully extinguished. The zombie fires smoldered for months under winter ice and snow, fed by the carbon-rich peat below the surface. When the spring melt arrived, the old fires blazed anew, Live Science previously reported.

If last summer is any indication, the hot solstice temperatures are just the beginning. Precisely one year ago, on June 20, 2020, the same region of Siberia recorded the first 100 F (38 C) day above the Arctic Circle — the hottest temperature ever recorded there. The sweltering day in Siberia fits into a larger climate change trend. For years, average temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at a far faster rate than anywhere else on Earth, largely due to melting sea ice induced by man-made global warming.

This is the frigging Arctic, people.  Not the Middle East.  Nor Outback Australia.  It has to be obvious to everybody (except those whose salaries depend on their blind eyes) that climate change is happening right now.  We don't have to wait for another 30 years to see its consequences.  They're crystal clear.  Right now, And we must act now to prevent it getting worse.

Nearly 90% of Norway's car sales electric

 (Where 'electric' means a car with an electric motor, i.e., full EVs, plug-in hybrids, and ordinary hybrids)

From Eyvind Aven

Norway car sales Jan 2021: BEVs cont. above 50%, but record month for PHEVs at 27.6%. Most popular car Toyota RAV4 of which 64% was PHEVs #ElectricVehicles: 81%! 

Note the steady downtrend in diesel, and since 2013, a similar trend in petrol.  By the end of 2021, electric sales could be approaching 99% of the market.

Norway 54% electric cars

 From Climate Action Australia.

Unfettered capitalism

.... vs democratic socialism

From Jeffrey Levin

75% of Norwegian car sales electric

From InsideEVs.

With Audi e-tron in its best form and supported by Tesla Model 3 volume deliveries, three out of four new cars sold were plug-ins.  March was an exceptional month in Norwegian history as the passenger plug-in electric cars for the very first time reached a market share of 75% (75.2% to be precise)! [That doesn't include conventional hybrids at 6.7%]

The total number of registrations actually decreased by 26.7% year-over-year from the all-time high of 12,764 (when tons of Tesla Model 3 come out a year ago) to 9,358, but it's still the second-best month ever.

The unprecedented surge in market share is mostly the result of a 32.2% drop of overall passenger car registrations, caused mostly by COVID-19, we guess.

Plug-ins were simply significantly less affected as plug-in hybrids actually improved year-over-year:

• BEVs: 6,966 (down 35.1%, at 55.9% market share) + 267 ‘used’ + 184 vans (180 new and 4 used) + 0 FCVs

• PHEVs: 2,392 (up 17.5%, at 19.2% market share)

As the plug-ins surge to 75.2% of the market, one might wonder what about conventional internal combustion engine cars? Well:

• diesel is at 10.4%

• gasoline is at 7.7%

• and the total ICE (diesel + gasoline) is at a record low of 18.1% (first time below 20%).

• The remaining 6.7% are other types, like conventional hybrids.

It's important to note that the incentives to buy EVs, PHEVs, and Hybrids haven't changed, yet the percentage of EVs/PHEVs keeps on rising.  Some of this is due to cheaper batteries which the car makers have used to extend range.  But much of it must be due to a demonstration effect.   A neighbour gets an electric car, a relative gets one, and so it seems much less outlandish to get one yourself.  More EVs means more charge points.  Better sales mean a bigger range of models.  

In 2012, 8 years ago,  plug-ins made up just 3% of Norway's car sales.  Last year, they reached 56%.  In 2020, they have briefly reached 75%.  By 2022, plug-ins will likely make up 90% of car sales in Norway.  The incentives in Norway to buy plug-ins are larger than elsewhere, so the uptake elsewhere may ramp more slowly, though the plunging cost of batteries will now start making plug-ins cheaper, offsetting that.  It seems very likely that by 2030 at the latest, most car sales globally will be plug-ins.  ICE car manufacturers have a brief window to transition--or go bankrupt.

[See also: The EV sales S-curve]

Source: InsideEVs

Viking economics

Scandinavia provides an alternative vision of economics and democracy to the kind of red-in-tooth-and-claw version that the USA practices, and which neo-liberals and economists have tried to make the standard ideology around the world.  Though policies differ in detail from country to country within Scandinavia, the general picture is one of high taxes, comprehensive welfare states, low inequality, low crime, low unemployment, free education and free health, and according to surveys, some of the happiest people in the developed world.  Despite all these things that the neo-liberal right deeply despises, somehow they also manage to have reasonable per capita growth (for developed countries—developing countries tend to have higher growth).

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

I’d like to tell you I’ve been away working hard on a study tour of the Nordic economies – or perhaps tracing the remnant economic impact of the Hanseatic League (look it up) – but the truth is we were too busy enjoying the sights around Scandinavia and the Baltic for me to spend much time reading the books and papers I’d taken along.

But since I always like telling people what I did on my holidays (oh, those fjords and waterfalls we saw while sailing up the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle!), I’ve been looking up facts and figures in a forthcoming book comparing the main developed countries on many criteria, by my mate Professor Rod Tiffen and others at Sydney University (including me).

But first, the travelogue. Prosperous countries have a lot in common but Scandinavia is different. I have seen the future and, while some might regard it as political correctness gone mad, it looked pretty good to me.

One aspect in which the Nordics (strictly speaking, Finland isn’t Scandinavian because it’s a republic rather than a monarchy and because the Finnish language bears no relation to Danish, Swedish or Norwegian) are way more advanced is the role of women.

All of them have had female prime ministers or presidents, they have loads of female politicians and we were always seeing women out at business functions with their male colleagues.

Governments spend much more on childcare and they’re big on men actually taking paid paternity leave. They have “family zones” in trains and we were struck by how many men we saw by themselves pushing prams.

They’re much more relaxed on sexual matters. These days, any new building in Sweden will have unisex toilets, with rows of cubicles and not a urinal to be seen. Neat way of sidestepping debates about which toilet transgender people should use.

The Nordics are well ahead of us on environmental matters. They’re bicycle crazy (a big health hazard for tourists who don’t know they’re standing in a bike lane) and drive small cars.

They’re obsessed with organic food and even hotel guests are expected to recycle their paper and plastic. One hotel we stayed at in Copenhagen was so concerned to save the planet its policy was to make up the rooms only every fourth day.

The Norwegians have made and, unlike the rest of us, saved their pile by selling oil to the world but you get the feeling it troubles their conscience. So, like the other Nordics, they have ambitious targets to move to renewables and, to that end, are making more use of carbon pricing than most other countries.

The truth is, I’ve long wanted to see Scandinavia for myself. It’s a part of the world that most politicians and economists prefer not to think about. Why not? Because its performance laughs at all they believe about how to run a successful economy.

Everyone in the English-speaking economies knows big government is the enemy of efficiency. The less governments do, the better things go. The lower we can get our taxes, the more we’ll grow.

Just ask Scott Morrison. As he loves to say, no one ever taxed their way to prosperity. What’s he doing to encourage jobs and growth? Cutting taxes, of course. That’s Economics 101 – so obvious it doesn’t need explaining.

Trouble is, the Nordics have some of the highest rates of government spending in the world and pay among the highest levels of taxation but have hugely successful economies.

The Danes pay 46 per cent of gross domestic product in total taxes, the Finns pay 44 per cent, the Swedes 43 per cent and the Norwegians 38 per cent (compared with our 28 per cent).

Measured by GDP per person, Norway's standard of living is well ahead of America's. Then come the Danes and the Swedes – at around the average for 18 developed democracies (as are we) – with the Finns just beating out the Brits and the French further down the list.

The Nordics are also good at managing their government budgets.

We all know unions are bad for jobs and growth and we’ve succeeded in getting our rate of union membership down to 17 per cent. Funny that, the Nordics still have the highest rates (up around two-thirds), so, do they have lots of strikes? No.

The four Nordics are right at the top when it comes to the smallest gap between rich and poor, with Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States right at the bottom.

Other indicators show that (provided you ignore the long snowy winters) the Nordics enjoy a high quality of life and not just a high material standard of living.

Note this, I’m not claiming that the Scandinavians are more economically successful because of their big government and high taxes. No, I’m saying that, contrary to the unshakable beliefs of many economists and all conservative politicians, there’s little connection between economic success and the size of government.

So how do the Scandis do it? I read this on the wall of an art museum in Aarhus, Denmark: “In a society we are mutually interdependent. Strengthening the spirit of community, we improve society for all of us as a group but we also provide each individual with better opportunities for realising his or her own potential.”

Source
Note: US population growth rates are higher than Scandinavian

Source

So deeply are the neo-liberal tenets held in Anglophone countries that no matter how much evidence is produced showing that the Scandinavian model works, I doubt that we will ever move towards their system.  Sad.

EVs reach 58% of Norway's car sales

Electric cars are seen at Tesla charging station in Gulsvik, Norway March 17, 2019.
REUTERS/Terje Solsvik

From Reuters:

Almost 60 percent of all new cars sold in Norway in March were fully electric, the Norwegian Road Federation (NRF) said on Monday, a global record as the country seeks to end fossil-fueled vehicles sales by 2025.

Exempting battery engines from taxes imposed on diesel and petrol cars has upended Norway’s auto market, elevating brands like Tesla and Nissan, with its Leaf model, while hurting sales of Toyota, Daimler and others.

In 2018, Norway’s fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation, and buyers had to wait as producers struggled to keep up with demand.

The surge of electric cars to a 58.4 percent market share in March came as Tesla ramped up delivery of its mid-sized Model 3, which retails from 442,000 crowns ($51,400), while Audi began deliveries of its 652,000-crowns e-tron sports utility vehicle.

[Read more here]

In 2012, plug-ins (that is, pure EVs and PHEVs) made up just 3% of total Norwegian car sales.  It's true that the jump in the percentage of EV/PHEV sales had been accelerated by incentives.  But the incentives haven't changed over the last few years.  So why has the percentage of EVs continued to rise in a classic S-curve?  In a word: awareness.  EVs are no longer strange and odd in Norway.  They're the norm.  Your friend has one, your mother buys one, you see them on the street.  As EV prices fall, the market penetration of EVs everywhere will follow the classic technology adoption S-curve.  3% to 60% in six years?  Yeah.  It's going to happen everywhere.

Why Norwegians don't immigrate to the USA

Norway nears 50% EV market share

4 years ago, plug-ins (PHEVs as well EVs) made up just 15% of Norway's new car market.  This percentage rose steadily.  In September, the ratio of plug-ins to all car sales reached 48%.

Now, there's been no change in the incentives Norway provides to buyers of plug-ins since 2014.  So what's changed?  Awareness, the spread of chargers, familiarity--and the reduction of incentives to buy EVs starting in January 2018.  Even if recent sales have been brought forward to take advantage of current generous incentives, it nevertheless still goes to show just how rapidly EVs and PHEVs will rise once the initial barriers of unfamiliarity and strangeness wear off.

Do not be misled by the low ratio of plug-ins to ICEVs (1.8%) in world car and light truck sales of today.  In 2012, plug-ins in Norway were just 3% of total car sales.  Now they make up nearly 50%.  Yes, the incentives in Norway to buy plug-ins are substantial.  But so was the cost differential between EVs/PHEVs and ICEVs when Norway started with its program to de-carbonise transport. And that cost differential is narrowing: within 5 or 6 years, EVs will cost pretty much the same as ICEVs.

There is every chance that world EV sales could rise very fast too.  Not as rapidly, because Norway is a single jurisdiction, and it's a small country in population terms, so new technologies and new ideas spread fast.  But California, already at 5%, could move very quickly (5 years) to 50%, even if the rest of the USA lags.  Sweden is already at 5%.  Other European countries are close to the flex point of the S curve, and plan future bans on ICEV sales.  And as always, China, 1/3rd of world auto output and sales, is determined to replace ICEVs with plug-ins to reduce pollution, and simultaneously grab for itself an even bigger chunk of the global car market.

Ironically, in Norway itself, the growth rate is likely to slow, in a typical "S"-curve way, as incentives to buy EVs are gradually reduced, starting next year.


[Read more here and here and here]

Source

Electric car "S" adoption curve

A nice chart from Zachary Shahan at CleanTechnica:

Update: 2 and a half years after I wrote this piece, EVs make up 75% of car sales in Norway.

The three factors slowing the adoption of EVs are:

• Cost.  Until a few months ago, EVs were more expensive than most cars.  But there are now EVs which cost the same as an average car, before tax incentives and subsidies, though they still cost more than cheap petrol/diesel cars (ICEVs).  The cost of EVs will keep on falling as battery costs decline.  Even though EVs are 80% cheaper to run than ICEVs, their "sticker price" needs to be lower than ICEVs to drive adoption rates up.
• Fast charger network.  Not having a decent charger network is no major problem for urban driving (you can charge at home overnight) but it makes long-distance driving difficult, and also, home charging won't work if you don't have a garage.  But firms won't build out a proper charger network until there are enough EVs to make it profitable, and sales of EVs are held back by the absence of a network of fast chargers . . . . .  Except of course for Tesla, which has a huge network of its own fast chargers plus an even bigger network of slower and sometimes more expensive "destination chargers" at hotels, motels and resorts.
• Familiarity. Many people have no idea EVs even exist.  One of the reasons EVs are now 35% of sales in Norway isn't just because of the incentives to encourage EV sales (other countries have generous incentives too) but because everybody knows about EVs.  In fact you get a special number plate in Norway if you have an EV/PHEV beginning with "E", giving you bragging rights. 

These three factors entwine and interact.  But in the end, the last two will resolve as EVs get cheaper.  Even though it would be ideal to have a network of fast chargers, many people living in houses with a garage will buy EVs even without a decent charging network as EVs get cheaper and cheaper (to buy and to run.)  When there are enough EV owners, companies will start building EV charge stations, which in turn will drive EV sales higher.  And when your neighbour or your friend buys an EV, you'll learn about them too, so that when your turn comes to buy a new car, you'll also choose an EV.

Meanwhile BHP, the world's largest mining house and a producer of oil, coal, copper, iron ore, zinc, nickel and potash reckons that the tipping point for EV sales is this year:

This year looks set to be the “tipping point” for electric cars, Arnoud Balhuizen, chief commercial officer at global miner BHP (BLT.L) said on Tuesday, with the impact for raw materials producers to be felt first in the metals market, and only later in oil.

“In September 2016 we published a blog and we set the question - could 2017 be the year of the electric vehicle revolution?” said Balhuizen, a company veteran who runs BHP’s commercial strategy, procurement and marketing from Singapore.

“The answer is yes...2017 is the revolution year we have been speaking about. And copper is the metal of the future.”

Electric cars are expected to soon cost the same as traditional vehicles - as early as next year by some estimates. But governments are also getting on board, with China’s subsidies leading the way and Britain becoming the latest country to announce its all-electric ambitions in July.

Balhuizen said he expected the electric vehicle boom would be felt - for producers - first in copper, where supply will struggle to match increased demand. The world’s top mines are aging and there have been no major discoveries in two decades.

[Read more here]

40% of Norway's car sales electric

It wasn't that long ago when it was a mere 16%.  This rise has taken place without any big price falls in EVs--GM's Bolt (in Opel disguise) is more or less unavailable in Norway  because demand from the USA has been so strong, and Tesla's Model 3 is still ramping up.  The incentives to encourage buying EVs haven't changed either in recent years.  The rise is more to do with increasing familiarity with the whole idea of EVs.  Your friend gets one, you go for a drive in one, you like their quietness and odourless drive, you see them on the street, you see newspaper articles and TV programs about them.  Most ppl in America have never heard of EVs.  They have no idea you can have a car that doesn't run on gasoline.  Norwegians know different.

I wonder how long it will be before 100% of Norway's new car sales are 100% EV/PHEV? Their target is 2025.

[Read more here and here and here]

Source