I was reading an article on this in The Guardian (ugh...) recently.
Not surprisingly, being the Guardian, it was all about heat pumps, but it's still relevant to "going electric."
"Device installed in two-thirds of households of country whose experience suggests switching to greener heating can be done"
Clearly this is working well for them, but this is important:
...But during the 1973 oil crisis, when prices shot up, the country's political leaders made a conscious choice to promote alternatives, and, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, they did not back away from that decision once the crisis eased...
So they had a substantial head start, as well as some wielding of the big stick:
...Norway ensured early on that fossil-fuel heating was the most expensive option, making heat pumps cost competitive," said Dr Jan Rosenow from the Regulatory Assistance Project, a thinktank that works to decarbonise buildings. "They did this by taxing carbon emissions from fossil heating fuels. That's been the key to incentivise heat pump adoption."
Much like our carbon tax here in Canada, although probably more severe. This is likely another major difference in Scandinavia, who have been traditionally very left-leaning and more accepting of governmental regulation.
...Norway also trained up a workforce to install them. While the devices themselves can be churned out of factories en masse, fitting them into homes can be fiddly and easy to mess up. In much of Europe, experts say, the lack of a skilled workforce is one of several bottlenecks holding the heat pump industry back...
Properly-trained workforce- what a concept! I had read about attempts in the UK to push heat pumps and, aside from so many older homes being woefully under-insulated and having dodgy windows, there have been numerous reports of insufficiently-trained installers mucking things up. (The Guardian article also says that "The Norwegians also benefit from well-insulated houses.") To some extent this may be true here as well, as every HVAC company jumps on the bandwagon. My gf's neighbours in WA state wanted to put a heat pump (mini-splits, I think) in their 70's-era rancher and got several quotes which were all over the map. I think they put one in themselves, with some knowledgeable help. This winter will show how well it works.
The Guardian article also mentions installing geothermal heat pumps, which do work very well, especially in very cold climates, but the cost is much higher than air-source. Useful for larger projects, though. My financial advisor lives in a 4-plex with a geothermal HP and has been very happy with it. But, like Norway, we in British Columbia have abundant "green" hydro, as does Québec. There is currently a real political firestorm brewing between our Feds and the prairie provinces, who are insisting that the "one size fits all" clean energy proposals being foisted across the country are simply impractical on the prairies, who don't have abundant green hydro.
Upgrading the grid itself, of course, is another problem entirely, as some here have mentioned. And there is still the question how to cope when the power goes out!
Going back to the original question of EV's in Norway, this article suggests that there is some rethinking on Norway's adoption of them.
Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts
