Were the Jetsons Norwegian?

If you don't remember who the Jetsons were, then they were a family in an eponymous 1960's US cartoon show set in the near future, where everyone whizzed around in flying cars, and had robots at home.

I've just come back from some time travelling around Norway. As I sat there chomping my pickled herring at breakfast, I overlooked the street outside my hotel. What did I see? Electric trams, an entire fleet of electric buses and the majority of cars and vans - and a surprisingly high number of trucks - were electric vehicles.

I left for the station opposite, and an electric train took me north to the station where I changed to a train to descend the world's steepest railway - to Flåm. Yes, it was also electric.

From Flåm (two metres above sea level) I took a trip to a viewpoint (at around 900m) that was very smooth thanks to the bus powered by - you guessed it - an electric motor. The guide told me that the local kommune (council) had grown wealthy on tax revenue from the nearby hydroelectric power plants, Norway's predominant generation source.

Then it was time for a trip down the Aurlandsfjord, to Bergen. The view was breathtaking, and was matched by the strikingly modern carbon-fibre catamaran that silently and swiftly carried me there and which was, of course, electric. The aptly named MS Future of the Fjords twin 450kW motors can carry 400 passengers at nearly 20 knots, for two hours on a single charge of its 1800 kWh battery. That's about 60x that of a typical EV, and it fully recharges in just 25 minutes.

MS Future of the Fjords recharging, and its vital stats!

In Bergen, I saw a large number of houses with air source heat pumps installed to power the heating systems within (it's harder to spot ground-source and water-source units from the outside). And just as with Oslo, the bus fleet was fully electric, as were the taxis.

Whilst you might expect that all modern trams would be electric, the Norwegian love affair with electric cars - which account for roughly 80% of car sales - is almost as easy to understand. The Norwegian government subsidises their purchase price to the point where they cost no more than petrol or diesel models (the British government no longer provides a subsidy). The Norwegian government has also bankrolled the installation of the necessary public fast chargers in almost mind-boggling volumes. 

Whilst Norway's bold shift to electrified transport is admirable, one eye must be kept on greening the supply chain for EV batteries. Whilst neighbouring Sweden utilises its own hydropower resources to power Europe's largest manufacturer, Northvolt, Norway will have to think hard on how to best protect biodiversity if it is to open its artic waters to seabed mining in part to satisfy demand for EV manufacturing.

Norway promoting the purchase of electric vehicles of all types, and electric heat pumps, make economic sense for a government that owns one of the world's largest oil firms (Equinor) and which runs one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds (the destination for the hefty taxes on fossil fuel production). The less oil and gas consumed domestically, the more that can be exported − including to my home country the UK, which imports the majority of its natural gas from Norway. Countries such as Germany have also been very keen to import gas from Norway as an alternative to Russia, and to pay a premium for this privelidge.

Overall, Norway's progress in the energy transition was impressive to see first-hand, and whilst I didn't see the flying cars that the Jetsons tantalised us with, I have no problems imagining the Jetsons having Norwegian accents.