The Bumpy Road to Low-Carbon Transportation: Comparing Norway’s Policies on Biofuels and Electrification of Vehicles

Although Norway aims to be a leader in international climate governance and has been an active donor of climate finance, the country struggles with reducing own territorial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: In 2017 the GHG emissions were at about the same level as they were in 1990. Norway’s electricity production is close to fully renewable and the largest GHG emitter, the petroleum sector, is part of the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS). Transport is the sector outside the EU ETS-regime with highest GHG emissions, and reducing Norway’s emissions therefore depends on the implementation of domestic climate policies in the transport sector. The EU’s second Renewable Energy Directive obliges Norway to reach a 10% renewable share in the transport sector by 2020. Two main policy measures have been introduced to comply with the directive: electrification of vehicles and increased use of biofuels. From 2010 to 2018 Norway went from having 3 000 to having 200 000 all-electric passenger cars. Electric cars now constitute more than 7 percent of the total car fleet, being by far the largest share of electric vehicles in the world. When it comes to biofuels however, the requirement for blending biofuels into petrol and diesel has steadily increased form 2009 onwards, but much of this requirement has been met by importing non-climate friendly palm-oil-based fuel, and Norway is far from reaching the sectorial target of increasing the production of bioenergy (of which a large part is biofuels) by 14 TWh by 2020. Analysing political and organizational factors as drivers and barriers of climate policies in the Norwegian transport sector we ask: Why has Norway managed to become an international leader on electric vehicles, but struggles with reaching the national targets for biofuels? We trace the development of electrification and biofuel policies in Norway the last 25 years, finding both similarities and differences between the policy processes. Both these sector specific policies deviate from the traditional Norwegian climate policy mantra of macro-economic, economy-wide measures. Further, the policy initiatives in both sectors started with aims of creating new technological and industrial development, and both politicians, environmental activists and business interests were active in early stages of the policymaking. However, domestic industrial development proved difficult in both sectors, and the two policies then development in different directions. Whereas the electric vehicles policy was aided by the international boom in technology, the sustainability of the biofuels policy was questioned by core environmental groups in Norway, and thus became more politically controversial.