To truly appreciate the recent decision by Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise the State of Palestine, the subject has to be placed in proper context.

On 15 November, 1988, Yasser Arafat, then Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, declared Palestine as an independent state.

The proclamation took place within important and unique contexts:

One, the Palestinian uprising of December 1987, which ignited international support and sympathy with the Palestinian people.

Two, growing expectations that the Palestinian leadership needed to match the popular Intifada in the Occupied Territories with a political program so as not to squander the global attention obtained by the uprising.

There were other issues that are also worth a pause, including the growing marginalization of the PLO as the main political front of the Palestinian struggle.

This irrelevance was the natural political outcome of the forced exile of the PLO leadership from Lebanon to Algeria in 1982, which largely severed the connection between this leadership and an influential Palestinian constituency.

Though Arafat’s announcement was made in Algiers, Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and across the world rejoiced. They felt that their leadership was, once more, directly involved in their struggle, and that their Intifada which, by then, had cost them hundreds of precious lives, had finally acquired some kind of political horizon.

The countries that almost immediately recognised the State of Palestine reflected the geopolitical formation at the time: Arab and Muslim countries, which fully and unconditionally recognized the nascent state. Additionally, there were countries in the Global South which expressed their historic solidarity with the Palestinian people.

A third category, which also mattered greatly, was represented by countries in Asia and eastern Europe – including Russia itself – which revolved within the Soviet sphere, posing a direct challenge to American hegemony and Western militarism and expansionism.

Soon after the Algiers Declaration, the geopolitics of the world received its greatest shock since World War II, namely the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent fragmentation of pro-Soviet states, thus the isolation of the Global South amid growing Western hegemony.

That, too, had a direct impact on Palestine. Though Arafat and his PLO made their fair share of mistakes and political miscalculations – leading to the Oslo Accords, the formation of the Palestinian Authority and the fragmentation of the Palestinian front itself – the Palestinian leadership’s options, from a strict geopolitical analysis, were quite limited.

Back then, the PLO had one out of two options: either to continue with the struggle for freedom and independence based on the national liberation model or to adopt a purely political approach based on negotiations and supposed ‘painful compromises’.  They opted for the latter, which proved to be a fatal mistake.

Political negotiations can be rewarding when the negotiating parties have leverage. While Israel had the leverage of being the occupying power and receiving unconditional support from the US and its Western allies, the Palestinians had very little.

Therefore, the outcome was as obvious as it was predictable. The PLO was sidelined in favour of a new political entity, the PA, which redefined the concept of political leverage altogether, to essentially mean direct financial benefits to an Israeli-sanctioned ruling class.

Since 1988, more countries recognised the State of Palestine, though that recognition remained largely confined within the geopolitical formations at each phase of history. For example, between 2008 and 2011, more South American countries recognized Palestine, a direct outcome of new and assertive political independence achieved in that part of the world.

Guardian News Video: “Ireland, Norway and Spain recognise Palestine as independent state”

In 2012, Palestine was voted by the United Nations General Assembly as a non-member observer state, allowing it to officially use the name ‘State of Palestine’ for all political purposes.

All Palestinian efforts, since then, have failed to overcome the power paradigm that continues to exist at the UN, separating the UNGA from those with veto power at the Security Council.

The events of 7 October, and the genocidal war that followed, have certainly ushered in a massive global movement that challenged the pre-existing geopolitical paradigm regarding Palestine.

If the war, however, had taken place, say ten years ago, the global response to the Palestinian plea for solidarity may have been different. But this is not the case, since the world is itself experiencing a major state of flux. New rising global powers have been boldly challenging, and changing, the world’s status quo geopolitics for years. This includes Russia’s direct confrontation with NATO in Ukraine, China’s rise to global power status, the growing influence of BRICS and the more assertive African and South American political agendas.

For its part, the Gaza war has also challenged the concept of military power as a guarantor of permanent dominance. This is now obvious in the Middle East and also globally.

The latter realisation has finally allowed for new, significant margins to appear, allowing Western European countries to finally accept the reality that Palestine deserves to be a State, that the Palestinian aspirations must be honoured and that international law must be respected.

Now, the challenge for Palestinians is whether they will be able to utilise this historic moment to the fullest degree. Hopefully, the precious blood spilled in Gaza would prove more sacred than the limited financial gains by a small group of politicians.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor .

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Oslo city council announced, “foodstuffs coming from Israeli-occupied areas must be labelled with the area from which the product comes and must indicate that it is from an Israeli settlement, if that is its source.”

The Norwegian government had already made a rule in 2022 that goods from the Occupied Territories could not be marked “Made in Israel,” only those produced inside Israel within its 1949 borders.

It may not be an accident that Oslo made this decision now. Daniel Boguslaw at The Intercept raised the question of whether the far, far right government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which is filled with open racists, fascists and Jewish supremacists, might be the best ally the movement for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel has ever had. Global headlines have been full of the hate filled comments of cabinet ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich urged the ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian hamlet.

The Geneva Convention on occupied territories of 1949 and the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court in 2002 both strictly forbid countries that occupy the territory of neighbors in wartime from settling their own citizens in this territory. The stricture came in response to atrocities committed by the Axis powers in World War II, as when Germany occupied Poland in 1939 and settled it with German citizens even as the Nazis killed and displaced Poles– in a bid to make Poland German and “Aryan” and to wipe out Slavs.

Israeli authorities have since the 1970s assiduously ignored international law and have subsidized the settling of hundreds of thousands of squatters on privately owned Palestinian farms, orchards and town property. At the same time, the Israeli state permanently locked some 300,000 Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza and has exerted various forms of pressure on them to emigrate abroad. They have also illegally annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem and part of the Palestinian West Bank near it, into which they are also putting squatters. Israeli squatter settlements are Jews-only and discriminate against Palestinian residents in Palestine itself.

Oslo’s principled stand is the form of BDS that I favor.

Via Pixabay: Oslo, file.

That is, I don’t think it is fair to boycott ordinary Israelis, many of whom do not like the squatters or their goals. Israel sits in the United Nations as a recognized state, and Oslo is not interested in boycotting companies or products produced in the state as it came into the UN, under the borders of the 1949 armistice. However, virtually everything Israeli authorities have done in the West Bank and Gaza since they were seized in 1967 has been grossly illegal. Worse, Israeli authorities have deprived the occupied Palestinians of the basic right to citizenship in the state, keeping them without even the right to have rights.

Much post-war international law was passed in an attempt to implement a “Never Again” policy — no more aggressive wars, no more annexations of neighbors’ territory, no more genocides against minorities such as Jews, Romani, gays and Poles. In flouting international law, Israeli authorities undermine their own alleged commitment to the principle of “Never again.” They have launched aggressive wars, displaced hundreds of thousands of people (who now have 11 million descendants), illegally annexed territory, and have squatted on occupied territory. The Holocaust can be viewed through the lens of Jewish nationalism or Zionism, such that it becomes a justification for Jews to refuse to be bound by international law or yield to outside pressure. Or it can be viewed through the lens of a humanist universalism, such that it is one of many horrific genocides in the twentieth century — the Armenian, the Polish, the Cambodian, and so forth — and the lesson we take away from it is not a Likud or Religious Zionism ‘get out of jail free’ card allowing the flouting of all laws and norms but the urgent necessity of upholding the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute with a determination that the lawlessness of the Nazis, of Mussolini’s black shirts, and of the Japanese imperial armed forces should never be repeated.

Oslo’s boycott is in furtherance of a rules-based international order, and is therefore highly praiseworthy.

( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany is taking another step towards achieving a fully renewable power system by completing the first electric cable connection with Norway, heads of government and ministers from both states have said at the official launch event of NordLink. The green transformation cannot be achieved by countries on their own, chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Integrating different energy sources in different countries, e.g. wind power in northern Germany with hydropower in Norway, is helping to ensure a secure power supply and stabilise energy prices, Merkel said. Energy minister Peter Altmaier said that the result is a win-win situation for both countries and consumers, as the energy transition would get cheaper the better European countries are interconnected.

The German government sees European integration of power systems as the key to achieving its own and the EU’s renewable and greenhouse gas reduction targets, chancellor Angela Merkel and her energy minister Peter Altmaier stressed at the official launch event of NordLink, the first cable connection between Germany and Norway. After five years of construction time, NordLink, which is the world’s longest subsea electrical interconnector, started operations in April 2021.

It has a capacity of 1.4 gigawatt and allows the transfer of excess renewable electricity to Norwegian pumped hydropower stations while at times of low wind power production in Germany, Norwegian dams can feed power back into the German grid. Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg said at the event that with NordLink, times of dark dead calms where weather dependent renewable sources do not provide enough power in Germany, are being covered.

German energy minister Peter Altmaier said that NordLink marks “a turn of the times, a qualitative leap forward”. He said norwegian hydropower and German wind power would “harmonise perfectly” and provide a win-win situation for both countries. “We are now showing that we can run a secure power supply on renewables around the clock”, he said, adding that the energy transition would get cheaper for consumers the better European countries are interconnected.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the green transformation process should not be handled on a national level alone. Every new power system interconnection meant an additional level of supply security for the countries involved, she said. “We have to think of supply security in European terms,” Merkel said. Nevertheless, NordLink wouldn’t solve all of Germany’s energy and grid issues, she added.

Another precondition are good grid connections between the northern and southern parts of Germany, “only then can NordLink show its whole benefit”. Merkel said that Germany would have to think about further acceleration measures for its national grid expansion, including the reducing the options for citizens to take legal action against the construction of new cables.

Germany – like the Scandinavian countries – is maintaining a very high level of power supply security with only around 13 minutes of power cuts experienced by consumers per year, energy minister Altmaier stressed. To ensure that it stays this way despite the phase-out of nuclear and coal power and the concentration of wind power production in the north of the country, new north-south power “highways” are needed.

As long as the majority of these lines is not completed, keeping Germany’s power grid stable requires costly interventions by transmission grid operators, so called feed-in management and redispatch measures. NordLink has the potential to reduce these interventions as it gives northern Germany the opportunity to export wind power when input is high (and prices low) and power lines to the south are congested. However it’s not clear yet, how significant the relief will be, Schleswig-Holstein’s energy transition minister Jan Philipp Albrecht said.

The consortium operating NordLink is a 50-50 venture between Statnett and DC Nordseekabel GmbH & Co.KG, a company equally owned by TenneT and KfW. The project’s total costs are estimated to range between 1.7 and 1.8 billion euros.

Via Clean Energy Wire

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NKT NordLink

But you don’t have to take Biden’s word for it. Girard Robinette at News-24-fr. reports that the Norwegian global sovereign wealth pension fund has dumped $6 billion in investments in oil and gas companies specializing in exploration and distribution.

Big Oil should just throw in the towel now, before more people get hurt. When the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world is dumping your stock because it is a loser in the near term, you may as well pack up and go home.

The fund, which is so huge that it holds about 1.5% of all the stock investments in the world and is worth some $1 trillion, lost $10 billion in a $40 billion oil and gas investment last year.

On Thursday, Trond Grande, the director general of the fund, said in a telephone call that the last of that portfolio had been sold by the end of last year.

Robinette reports that already in 2017, Norway’s central bank had declared that the fund must get out of oil stocks, given that the global push to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and avoid the worst effects of climate change is destined to make petroleum futures volatile in coming years. And, I would add, they will gradually become worthless over the next 15 years!

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund still has oil stocks,including a position in Shell, but they are in larger integrated companies, not smaller ones specializing in finding new petroleum fields.

The Norwegian investment fund did not take this step because the institution is full of starry-eyed idealists. Fleeing petroleum and gas exploration as a business was a stone cold business decision. That sector is not going to thrive in the medium term.

Robinette writes that he talked recently to Bård Lahn, a researcher in the Norwegian Center for International Research on the Climate (CICERO), who said that the fund’s decision was likely driven mainly by economic considerations.

Remember, Norway still produces a lot of petroleum, and, ironically, the sovereign wealth pension fund gets its money from the country’s oil industry. The fund is Norway’s attempt to continue to generate income after the oil industry declines, as it will in the coming decade and a half.

The fund may also, however, develop more of a social conscience now. The new CEO of the fund, Nicolai Tangen, is making sustainable investing central to the task of all the fund managers. So writes Lars Erik Taralden at Bloomsberg. Tangen, a chef and art historian as well as hedge fund manager, is looking to underwrite green energy projects. Ironically, they will inevitably replace the earlier petroleum investments.

Five years ago, I called petroleum investments a “Hindenberg trap” and warned that everybody should dump those stocks from their retirement portfolios.

I wrote, “So there isn’t any doubt about it. Buying stocks in coal, gas and oil companies is like buying stocks in zeppelins. They are outmoded and prone to crashing and burning, a Hindenburg waiting to happen. (Zeppelins were good investments once, too; they carried tens of thousands of people across the Atlantic and the top of the Empire State Building was designed to anchor them; but they became a stranded asset.)”

I see that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has come around to agreeing.

——

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The Norwegian’s Oil Fund vs Westminster Oil Idiocy.

Volkswagen’s new ID.3 soared in Norway as Tesla dropped in popularity. It less expensive than a Tesla, and is more of a family car.

All this matters because vehicles account for 28% of US greenhouse gas emissions, and we can’t stop wrecking the planet unless we reduce that to zero.

Norway is an outlier in world terms with regard to these percentages. Still, plug-in vehicles (PHEV) of various sorts accounted for 13% of new vehicle sales in Europe in October, a startling 190% increase year over year, at 147,000 units (Norway’s absolute numbers are small).

And even though in China the percentage of plug-in new car registrations is only 7% this fall, the absolute numbers there, too, dwarf small countries such as Norway. In October, China registered 147,285 new plugins, a 120% increase year over year. Some 82% of these are battery electric vehicles (BEV), i.e. pure electric. That is, PHEV progress in China was similar in absolute numbers to Europe, and the increases are impressive there, too, if not quite as sizzling hot as the EU’s.

China’s subsidies for electric vehicles, in line with the CCP PolitBuro’s decision to get to net carbon zero by 2060, will rocket 230% in 2021, to $5.7 billion.

Ketan Joshi at The Driven reports on an Australian study on how Norway has achieved these impressive percentages of plug-in vehicles. Hint: it is through tax policy and fees, and, as in China, subsidies. Norway’s government knows what it wants. It wants lower carbon emissions, and ultimately none at all. The way to get that is to adjust prices at the point of sale by lowering taxes and fees on electric vehicles and raising them on internal combustion cars. Joshi quotes a Norwegian this explanation: “High taxes for high emission cars and lower taxes for low and zero-emission cars. Introducing taxes on polluting cars can finance incentives for zero-emission cars without any loss in revenues.”

( Clean Energy Wire ) – European leaders, researchers and media commentators breathed a collective sigh of relief following Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and expressed hope for a new partnership on combating climate change. The news fuelled expectations that the new president will re-join the Paris Agreement and might even follow the EU and China in setting a goal for reaching climate or CO2 neutrality by the middle of the century. Key stumbling blocks between Germany and the United States, such as trade, energy supply, and foreign affairs, will remain, but hopes are growing that Biden will be keen to forge common solutions.

Europe and US stand side by side in fight against climate change – Chancellor Merkel

German chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their victory, saying she was looking forward to working with them. The European Union, Germany and the US would have to stand together to overcome the most important global challenges. “We stand side by side in the fight against global warming and its worldwide effects,” she said in a press statement on Monday morning.

Biden win could open possibility of transatlantic emissions trading system – finance minister Scholz

The United States is and remains Europe’s closest ally in the world, and combating climate change will be on top of the agenda to further deepen this relationship under next president Joe Biden, writes finance minister Olaf Scholz in an op-ed for Spiegel Online. “Not to cover up the obvious with diplomatic rhetoric: Like many of my counterparts across Europe, I am relieved.”

Not everything will be different under Biden, writes Scholz. “But we can hope that Joe Biden will mark the end of the current president’s course against international cooperation, multilateralism and the functioning of international organisations.” With his pledge to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement, Biden essentially opens up “the opportunity to start negotiations on the establishment of a transatlantic emissions trading scheme which, in the long term, must cover all the major economies of the world.” Scholz writes that companies on both sides of the Atlantic would benefit a lot from the “expected US climate policy turnaround.”

“Not to cover up the obvious with diplomatic rhetoric: Like many of my counterparts across Europe, I am relieved.”

Olaf Scholz, German finance minister

“Confident that the US administration will become a strong ally in the fight against climate change” – environment minister Schulze

Svenja Schulze, Germany’s environment minister said in a tweet: “With a President Joe Biden and a Vice-President Kamala Harris, international cooperation and committed climate policy will return to the White House. I look forward to the revived cooperation with Washington and I am confident that the US administration will become a strong ally in the fight against climate change and the greening of the global economy.”

Now we have real prospect of tackling climate change together – economy minister Altmaier

Biden’s announcement to re-enter the Paris Agreement is among the most important prospects of his term in office, economy minister Peter Altmaier told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “This means that we now have a new chance and a real prospect that we can move forward together on climate action,” said the minister. If the US were to sign on to the pledge to become climate-neutral by 2050, this would be good not only for the economy, but for the planet, he added.

Altmaier cautioned that Biden would not forget issues, such as Germany’s foreign trade surplus. “I believe that some of the problems will continue to concern us, but with the chance to find common solutions.” The minister called for a “broad-based industrial tariff agreement between the US and the European Union.” He added that German carmakers’ factories in the US were a sign that his country was ready to invest there and create jobs.

Renewed EU-US partnership needed to tackle future challenges like climate change – European Commission president von der Leyen

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Biden and said the “renewed” EU-US partnership would be important to tackle challenges in a changing world. “The European Commission stands ready to intensify cooperation with the new Administration and the new Congress to address pressing challenges we face and notably: fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social consequences, tackling climate change together, promoting a digital transformation that benefits people, strengthening our common security, as well as reforming the rules-based multilateral system.”

Other European Union officials also pointed to the change they are expecting. “We very much look forward to this new transatlantic partnership,” said trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis in a message on Twitter. Today (9 November), showing clearly the state of current transatlantic relations, Dombrovskis announced the EU would impose tariffs on imports of 4 billion US dollars in US goods, as part of a long-running US-EU battle over civil aviation subsidies.

Biden election a source of hope – French minister

The French minister for the ecologic transition, Barbara Pompili, congratulated Biden and Harris on Twitter. “Only weeks before the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, this election is a source of hope that we tackle the ecologic challenges of the century together!”

Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera likewise congratulated the president-elect and offered a whole list of expectations in environmental policy cooperation for the incoming Democratic administration. Among these, Ribera said, would be “science based decisions” that are particularly important with respect to health and climate policy. She voiced hopes that the new US government will help accelerate the spread of renewable energy sources, boost green finance principles and help achieve technological breakthroughs.

New US climate contribution will “not be too ambitious but anything would be improvement from now” – economist Claudia Kemfert

Claudia Kemfert, professor for energy economics and energy policy at the German Institute for Economic Research, has warned on Twitter that not everything will change under Biden. “Biden also considers Nord Stream 2 (rightly) a mistake. It is unlikely that the sanctions will be lifted, but presumably they will not become ever more stringent.” She also said that in order to re-join the Paris Agreement, the US would have to present a new, ambitious climate contribution (NDC) for the year 2030. “It will not be too ambitious but anything would be an improvement from now,” she said. Kemfert recommended that the European Union and the US initiate a joint “Green New Deal” that would support a 100 percent renewable goal, and put an end to subsidies for conventional energy sources.

Biden’s win truly marks “a new beginning” – economist Ottmar Edenhofer

Joe Biden’s election victory truly marks “a new beginning,” Ottmar Edenhofer, director and chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said in an interview with Der Spiegel. Although Biden’s political scope is limited if the Republicans keep the majority in the Senate, he can reform the rules for the electricity and energy sector, according to Edenhofer. When it comes to international climate action by the EU, China and the US, “Europe in particular has an important task,” Edenhofer said, for example by setting a proposal for a CO2 pricing system that includes other world regions.

Victory for international climate action – NGOs

“The election of Joe Biden is a victory for democracy and the climate movement,” Greenpeace Germany’s executive director Martin Kaiser said, mentioning Bidens plans to rejoin the Paris Agreement and accelerate the switch to renewables and phase-out of the internal combustion engine. “Chancellor Merkel and the European Union should take Joe Biden at his word and, together with the USA and China, consistently tackle the climate crisis after four lost years,” Kaiser said.

Christoph Bals, policy director at Germanwatch, said in a press release: “The change at the top of the US massively increases the chances for effective international climate policy.” The EU should immediately explore what agreements are possible between a new US administration and other partners in climate protection and supporting poorer countries through climate financing, Bals said. “The German government, which holds the presidency of the EU Council until the end of the year, can start laying the foundations for this.”

Biden faces hurdles on the way to climate protection – Spiegel Online

“Biden promised the most ambitious climate programme ever presented by a presidential candidate during his election campaign,” Kurt Stukenberg writes in an opinion piece in Der Spiegel. However, Biden faces hurdles on the way to climate protection, according to Stukenberg. The president-elect has yet to present reduction targets for the next years, and to push through his climate plans he needs the support of the US Congress – which will be difficult in case of a Republican majority there. But even with only the means available to him, Biden could achieve a lot of progress, Stukenberg says:. “He could instruct the US Environmental Protection Agency to set stricter emission limits for power plants in order to come closer to his goal of a regenerative power supply by 2035, withdraw the facilitations for oil and gas production on public land introduced under Trump and reintroduce stricter regulations for methane emissions from gas production.”

New US administration will find itself in a “climate policy debris field” – taz

Despite Joe Biden’s expectations and ambitions, making the US climate-neutral by 2050 will not be easy, as the new US administration will find itself in a “climate policy debris field,” writes Bernhard Pötter in the taz. “According to a Washington Post analysis, Trump and his followers have watered down or abolished a total of 125 environmental standards and laws; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State Department, both central to energy and climate policy, have been destroyed from within by Trump’s troops, and many experts have turned their backs on the authorities.”

“As big as the shock was four years ago when Trump won the election in the middle of the climate conference in Marrakech,” Susanne Dröge, climate expert at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) told taz, “so big are the expectations now that much will change under Biden.”

Car companies can expect new e-car incentives – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Companies can expect more planning security from Joe Biden, but also more regulations, Astrid Dörner, Moritz Koch and Katharina Hort write in Handelsblatt. Amongst other things, Biden plans more tax incentives for car buyers. For German manufacturers like VW, BMW and Mercedes, who have local factories in the USA, this creates an incentive to speed up their own e-car production. Biden is also likely to tighten the regulations for emissions. In California, BMW and VW, together with Honda and Ford, have voluntarily committed to reducing their emissions.

Via Clean Energy Wire

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Europe welcomes Biden win, hoping to improve relations”

]]> https://www.juancole.com/2017/08/norway-worlds-society.html https://www.juancole.com/2017/08/norway-worlds-society.html#comments Mon, 21 Aug 2017 05:58:42 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=170144 By Sam Morgan | EurActiv.com | – –

Norway has the renewable resources and political will to become the world’s first country to use entirely clean electricity for its power demands, according to a new report by Energi Norge, a non-profit industry group representing Norwegian electricity companies.

“Our target is for Norway, based on hydro power and better collaboration between businesses and the authorities, to become the world’s first fully electric society by 2050,” Energi Norge head Oluf Ulseth told the Norwegian News Agency NTB.

Norway’s government ministers recently announced that the sale of combustion engine cars will be phased out by 2025, a move that has been copied to some degree in other European countries like France and the United Kingdom.

Norway wants to increase the number of electric cars on its roads, which already tops 100,000. The government has introduced policies to encourage that, like tax exemption for leased e-cars or allowing owners of the vehicles to use bus lanes, toll roads and ferries free of charge.

Electric car sales represented 22% of the country’s market in 2015 and that number is expected to grow to 30% by the end of next year. However, Energi Norge cautioned that converting Norway’s fleet of vehicles will need “considerable effort within the transport industry”.

Norway has set itself ambitious targets under the European Clean Power for Transport directive, which calls for an “appropriate number of publicly accessible [charging] points”. Oslo hopes to have one point per every ten cars, meaning it will need around 25,000 in place by 2020.

Norway spearheads Europe’s electric vehicle surge

European electromobility is beginning to take off. The targets set by the Paris climate deal depend on it. The EU’s Nordic neighbour, Norway, is showing the rest of Europe the way forward. EURACTIV’s partner The Guardian reports.

E-mobility efforts are often criticised by green campaigners because carbon footprint is ultimately linked to whatever the power source is at the end of the charging cable.

More than 96% of Norway’s electricity demand is met by hydropower at the moment, with another 2% coming from other renewables. Three natural gas power plants make up the remaining portion of the energy mix.
New electrification alliance seeks top billing in EU’s decarbonisation efforts

Industry groups representing sectors as varied as wind and solar power, fuel cell batteries, copper and heat pumps, have clubbed together to launch the Electrification Alliance, with the hope that electricity will be recognised as the main energy carrier in Europe’s decarbonisation drive.

Energy Norge’s Ulseth added that the conversion to electricity would boost the job market and innovation, and the process would “enable us to take a leading role in climate work while improving our competitiveness”.

Norway’s electrification is set to benefit its closest EU neighbours, Denmark and Sweden, as the Nordic countries’ grids have long been connected.

The Norwegian grid will soon be connected to the United Kingdom and Germany too, as numerous interconnector projects are currently in different stages of development.

NordLink, which would connect Norway and Germany via a 500km-long subsea cable, is due to come online in 2019, while the North Sea Link with the UK is slated to be completed in 2021. There are also plans to link up with Scotland, under the NorthConnect project.

Both NordLink and NorthConnect have been the subject of EU funding under its Projects of Common Interest programme.

Via EurActiv.com

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Vox: “Why Norway is full of Teslas?”

The Norwegian insurance giant, KLP Kapitalforvaltning, has divested two international building material companies from its investment portfolio because of their operations in the West Bank settlements.

Haaretz Israeli newspaper reported, according to the PNN, KLP divested of its shares in these companies effectively on June 1, citing international law as set in the Hague and Geneva conventions. The Norwegian firm insures all municipal workers in the Scandinavian nation and holds 35 billion dollars worth of assets.

Haaretz added that the move is part of KLP’s half-yearly review of companies in its portfolio, alongside excluding five more companies because of their income from coal-based operations, one for corruption, one for severe environmental damage and one for production of tobacco.

The two companies, Heidelberg Cement, a German company, and Cemex, a Mexican firm, acquired smaller companies with Israeli subsidiaries operating quarries in parts of the West Bank known as Area C, under complete Israeli civilian and military control as defined by the Oslo accords, Haaretz reported.

Earlier this month, KLP wrote that “no such agreement can override the rules relating to occupation set out in the Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

In response, head of responsible investment at KLP, Jeanett Bergan stated that “From the perspective of international law, an assessment of this case has proved more difficult than similar assessments with respect to Western Sahara. Nevertheless, the international legal principle that occupation should be temporary has carried the most weight. New exploitation of natural resources in occupied territory offers a strong incentive to prolong a conflict.”

KLP before taking any steps asked the companies for clarifications about their West Bank operations.

Heidelberg confirmed that one of its subsidiaries operated quarries in the West Bank and was aware of the criticism about this operation, with no intents of stopping. Cemex asserted that most of the workers at its West Bank quarry were Palestinians, and that they received the same conditions as their Israeli colleagues. Cemex also asserted that its operation in the West Bank was legal because the Oslo Accords allow Israel to maintain full control of Area C pending a permanent settlement, Haaretz said.

KLP rejected these arguments.

“KLP considers that the ethical arguments carry the heaviest weight in this case,” the company announced. “The extraction of non-renewable resources in occupied territory may weaken the future income potential of the local population, including the Palestinian residents. Moreover, when this is undertaken in a way that is difficult to justify within the requirements of the law of belligerent occupation, KLP considers that this activity represents an unacceptable risk of violating fundamental ethical norms.”

Via IMEMC

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wochit News: “Orange’s Pullout From Israel Gives Lift to Boycott”

“Norwegian Muslims form a human shield around a synagogue in Oslo, offering symbolic protection after an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark. Gavino Garay reports.”

Reuters: “‘Human shield’ wraps around Oslo synagogue”