ONELIFE #35 – American English

OSLO GREEN CAPITAL
“CLIMATE-RELATED
CHALLENGES FORCE US TO
MAKE DRASTIC DECISIONS”
Tuesday morning, 9 am, in Grünerløkka, Oslo’s hippest district
where most of the apartment buildings are only a couple of floors
high and have been carefully renovated without looking too clean.
It seems like every other person has either a café latte or a stroller.
In the midst of them all, Dagmar Kollstrøm is just parking her
electric car. As she gets out of the vehicle, she reaches for a cable
and connects her car to the charging station. “It’s free to park and
‘refuel’ my car – because it runs on electricity!” says Kollstrøm
before heading around the corner to the advertising agency where
she works as a writer.
Oslo has become the electric car center of the world. There is no
other capital city with as many electric cars as here. This is primarily
because the politicians give citizens so many benefits if they opt for
zero-emission vehicles. “When I needed a new car three years
back, I decided to go for an electric one for environmental reasons,
but also because this offered good value,” says Kollstrøm before
explaining that her car purchase was tax free, which makes a huge
difference in Norway where taxes are extremely high.
“Other countries are pouring money into public awareness
campaigns. In Norway, people can easily calculate that electric
cars make financial sense,” says Christina Bu, Managing Director
of Elbil, the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association. “Through tax
exemption a medium-sized electric car ends up costing slightly
less that the equivalent model with a combustion engine,” says Bu.
Last year, electric and hybrid vehicles accounted for a rather
impressive 40% of all newly registered cars in Norway. The number
of these is particularly high in and around Oslo, and in 2016 the
number of hybrid cars exceeded that of electric ones nationwide
for the first time. According to Marius Holm, resource economist
and Managing Director of the environmental foundation Zero,
which is working for a fossil fuel-free future, this will only be a
temporary shift until a broader range of larger electric cars is
available. “Our goal is to have electric cars to make up 100% of
all new cars as quickly as possible. I believe that within the next
four years, at least eight out of ten newly registered cars will run
on electricity,” says Holm.
The question is often asked why Norway has three times as
many alternatively powered, environmentally friendly vehicles as
Germany, despite the latter having 15 times the population.
The answer can be found by simply heading out of the city to
one of Norway’s most popular tourist attractions and observing
the traffic en route.
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