McKinley Corbley from GoodNewsNetwork.com writes:
37% of Norway’s automotive market is currently taken up by electric and hybrid cars – but now the northern nation is planning to make it 100% by 2025.
Over the course of the next eight years, the Norwegian Parliament is attempting to make sure that all cars sold in the country will either be low or zero emission vehicles. This will hopefully be achieved by implementing a stronger green tax system with more financial incentives, rather than a total ban on fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Ever since 1990, Norway has enforced over a dozen benefits for electric or hybrid car owners. These benefits include priority highway access, a 50% reduced company car tax, annulled fees on toll roads and ferries, access to bus lanes, certain tax exemptions, and free parking in municipalities.
In order to accommodate the ever-increasing amount of low emission vehicles, Norway plans on constructing at least one charging station for every 10 electric cars on the road, amounting to at least 50,000 by 2020.
Though it is unclear whether these charging stations would still be powered by fossil fuel or coal plants, there are still numerous environmental benefits to exclusively using hybrid or electric cars.
According to Sherry Boschert, author of Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, using hybrids and electric cars that draw power from a main grid would still drastically reduce the amount of nitrous oxide released into the air by 32% to 99%. Nitrogen oxides have been shown to have extremely dangerous effects on people’s health as well as the environment.
Switching to low emission vehicles could also reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 17% to 71%, depending on the area.
About the Author
McKinley Corbley: Editor and writer for GNN; part-time circus junkie; and part-time English student in community college. Enjoys feminism, bad puns, travel, and copious amounts of stomach-ache inducing pasta.
Source: http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/cars-sold-norway-electric-2025/