Tuesday, June 7, 2016

"...Norway mulls ‘banning’ petrol & diesel cars by 2025, Elon Musk delighted"

See yesterday's "Saudi Aramco and The End of the Oil Age" for further discussion of the electric vehicle disruption timeline and its effect on the Saudi way of life. And stuff.
From RT, June 5:
Norwegian MPs have reportedly agreed to ban or at least significantly reduce the sales of all cars run on fossil fuel after 2025. The report was welcomed with enthusiasm by the proponents of electric vehicles, including tech mogul Elon Musk of Tesla Motors.
The news broke following interparty discussion of the national transport plan eyeing only zero emission vehicles to be sold within 10 years.
Norwegian Liberal Party MP Ola Elverstuen told local outlet Dagens Naeringsliv that his fellow MPs and those of the Progress Party, the Christian Democrats and the Conservative Party have reached a groundbreaking decision to meet the goals. Those have been outlined in the ambitious national transport plan 2018-2029 which stipulates gradually banning all types of vehicles that harm the environment such as fuel-powered cars, vans, busies and heavy vehicles. 
“Now it’s no longer just a message about energy, but the message about climate,” Elverstuen said.
Øyvind Korsberg, an MP for the Progress Party, went even further in his estimates of how far-reaching the consequences of the plan would be.
“After 2025 new private cars, buses and light commercial vehicles will be zero-emission vehicles. By 2030, new heavier vans, 75 percent of new long-distance buses, 50 percent of new trucks will be zero emission vehicles,” he said, referring to the targets stated in the white paper on the energy policy mapped by the Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Ministry in April. The paper requires formal approval if it is to be converted into an official policy.

The plan’s implementation is closely connected to offering financial stimuli for potential electric car buyers for them to get rid of the petroleum-powered vehicles.

“People should be confident that it will be significantly cheaper with a zero emissions car than with a traditional car,” Elverstuen said.

However, the Conservative Party on Thursday issued a statement downplaying the report and calling it “misleading,” as cited by ABC Nyheter.

“There is no issue of banning the sale of diesel and gasoline vehicles in 2025, although someone could have got this impression from Dagens Naeringsliv,” said Tina Bru, Conservative party MP and a member of the Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment. She added that the discussion focused on determining the maximum number of low and zero-emissions vehicles that “we need on Norwegian roads in 2025 to reach climate goals.”...MORE
HT: Oil Price who use a rather more click-baity headline: "Norway Set To Ban Fossil Fuel Cars In 2025"
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