A long history of policy measures to encourage electric vehicle (EV) adoption has helped Norway to achieve the world’s highest share of EV sales in total car sales, reaching 65% in 2021, and 86% including plug-in hybrids.²³ This has led to a 16% share of Norway’s total car fleet being fully electric by the end of 2020, with a further 6% hybrid electric.²⁴ This rapid electrification of Norway’s passenger cars has begun to bring total transport sector emissions down, falling 15% between 2015 and 2019.¹⁷

Norway is currently on track to meet its ambitious 2025 phase-out date for the sale of fossil fuel cars and light vans, while sales of EVs and hybrids could make up 100% of total car sales by the end of 2022.²⁵ Other targets include all new city buses to be zero-emission or run on biogas by 2025, and for all heavier vans, 75% of new long-distance buses, and 50% of new lorries to be zero emission by 2030.²⁶ Measures targeting modal shift that reduce the demand for personal vehicle or air travel remain absent from Norway’s Climate Action Plan. Roughly USD 43 billion was allocated towards the expansion of Norway’s rail network in the recently released National Transport Plan 2022-2033, though significantly less than the USD 62 billion for roadworks.²⁷

To align with 1.5°C compatible pathways, Norway would need to reduce transport sector CO₂ emissions by at least 57% below 2019 levels by 2030, and reach zero by 2050. Electricity’s share of the transport sector’s final energy demand would need to increase from 3% in 2019 to around half by 2030 without substantial biofuel use, and around 80% if biofuel use remains limited and hydrogen use does not ramp up substantially.