OSLO GREEN CAPITAL

OSLO GREEN CAPITAL “CLIMATE-RELATED CHALLENGES FORCE US TO MAKE DRASTIC DECISIONS” Tuesday morning, 9am, in Grünerløkka, Oslo’s hippest district where most of the apartment buildings are only a couple of stories high and have been carefully renovated without looking too clean. It seems like every other person has either a café latte or a pushchair. 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 centre 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 made 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. 24

RIGHT XXXXXX CONTRASTS Oslo, with its mix of modern architecture and classic Scandinavian style, benefits from the large number of public parks. Resource economist Marius Holm (left), the Secretary General of the Norwegian EV Association Christina Bu (below) and the Nielsen family (above) wouldn’t want it any other way. 25