Norway's stunning progress on electric cars puts UK to shame

Between January and September last year, 18 per cent of the new cars sold in the UK were electric. In contrast, EVs now account for 89 per cent of new car sales in Norway. It is, admittedly, the world leader but we are a long way behind.

Despite the importance of its oil and gas industry, Norway has taken to electric cars in a big way. Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian EV association, told Reuters it would be the first country in the world to “pretty much erase petrol and diesel engine cars from the new car market”.

The reasons why include higher taxes on petrol and diesel cars, and tax breaks for EVs, a simple but clearly effective strategy. The numbers will have been helped by the fact that EVs are cheaper to run, by about £500 a year, according to one estimate. Bu said using such incentives – rather than banning on petrol cars, which would have “made people angry” – had been key.

Electric cars charge on a street on Norway's capital Oslo (Picture: Jonathan Nackstrand) | AFP via Getty Images

Trump weighs in

So where has the UK gone wrong? Well, in 2020, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced a “historic” ban on sales of new fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030. Three years later, Rishi Sunak, warning that trying to decarbonise too quickly "risks losing the consent of the British people", pushed the deadline back to 2035.

Labour is now in talks with the car industry about a return to 2030. Judging by the Norway experience, they might be better advised to drop the ban and create market incentives instead. Effective policies to deliver a net-zero economy are not always those that sound the most impressive.

However, not everyone in this debate has the same goal in mind. Some are intent on throwing spanners in the works because they think climate change is a “hoax”. People like the US President-elect, Donald Trump.

Responding to news that a US oil company plans to leave the North Sea by 2029, Trump posted on social media: "The UK is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!" However, some climate sceptics or ‘deniers’ are every bit as ideological as the most extreme eco-warriors.

Cheap solar and wind energy

According to trade association UK Energy, onshore wind is “significantly quicker [to build] and cheaper than other forms of energy generation”. While solar has the lowest cost, onshore wind is “six times cheaper than gas”. Let that sink in.

Trump, the supposedly great businessman and man of the people, wants customers to pay higher bills, the country to miss out on creating a major offshore wind industry, and our energy security to depend on fossil fuel imports from Middle East dictatorships and, of course, the US.

Thanks largely to renewables, the decarbonisation of the UK’s electricity supply has been as quick as progress on EVs has been slow. In just ten years, carbon dioxide emissions for each kilowatt-hour have fallen from 419 to 124 grams.

This means that a typical electric car now produces 70 per cent fewer emissions than a petrol one over the vehicle’s lifetime. If only the UK had a similar number of EVs to Norway, whose success puts us to shame, then the air we breathe would be cleaner, our contribution to climate change smaller, and the UK’s path to a net-zero economy would be smoother by far.