In 2017, Norway set a goal of eliminating sales of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2025. At the time it seemed like little more than a feel-good fantasy to soften the image of a government led by Erna Solberg, a conservative advocate of oil production who’d earned the sobriquet “Iron Erna.” But as the deadline approaches, it turns out that the Nordic country will come within a whisker of meeting that milestone.
Sure, the achievement has been facilitated by the country’s fossil fuel exports—$108 billion in 2023—but it stands out against a background of retreating electric-vehicle sales across Europe and faltering progress in the US, where EV adoption is in danger as Donald Trump returns to power. The initial target was “utopian,” says Harald Andersen, head of Norway’s car import association, which represents companies ranging from Chinese upstarts to German stalwart Volkswagen AG. “We set ambitious goals,” he says, “but those goals were followed up with the right policies.”
