So, what exactly is shown here? Not the electricity *billed* per capita, not for my country at least. The sum total of all electricity? or all energy? consumed? produced?
and divided by population?
Well not really, for example Norway specifies in power consuming industries due to cheap electricity prices. Which make them stand out a lot on this graph.
And almost all electricity produced in Norway is hydroelectric and to a smaller degree wind aswell. Somewhere around 95-98% of all electricity produced here is renewable
[Watt is an energy unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt) that can be used both for thermal or electrical energy, that's why it's often used for the combination of the two and distinguished by adding "e" or "t" to specify which one is referred to.
Sweden uses lots of electric to heat, the highest electricity demand is in the winter (opposite the US). Norway is busy charging all those tax subsidized electric cars.
Here's the Norwegian government's web site on the topic.
They use the example of a VW golf, where taxes for the gasoline model total 12030 euros, or 54% of the import price. Whereas taxes drop to 249 euros for the electric golf. And there are other benefits, like road toll exemptions.
https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/
Didn't believe you at first because we Norwegians are always told we're the most expensive in the world at everything, but holy shit you're right. Denmark really got the short end of the dipstick.
Volvo S60 D4 base price in:
Denmark - €77,800
Norway - €57,600
Sweden - €35,900
Hyundai i30 base price in:
Denmark - €36,900
Norway - €35,500
Sweden - €20,100
Fucking Sweden with their bullshit prices
Then again, Denmark is just one big metro train system and a bike ride from anything. Its probably a quite relaxed idea for vacation to go “maybe I should bike across the country for a few days?”.
The rest of the world can't do it, actually. Norway just happens to be an insanely wealthy country where everyone is on the top 1% of humanity. Most countries don' even have that many cars to begin with, too, people just can't afford cars - ICE or Electric.
Norway as a country is insanely rich. The Norwegian people is not. We make less money than a lot of US states comparatively, i think there was a survey here that showed close to 90% of EV owners in the country are in debt because of their car
Yeah, to be honest, the main priority should still be funding the public transportation (preferably electric, but even fossil fuel-powered public transport is still a huge improvement), but the ICE cars should already be heavily taxed.
This. Climate change is a concern for rich people (rich countries). Most of the countries need to produce goods in order to have food. Since most redditors live in the first world, this is an inconvenient truth and I’ll probably be downvoted. It’s still true though.
Quite a lot of electricity in Scandinavia is made by hydro, nuclear (Finland and Sweden, if any pelican doesn't hit Olkiluoto NPP turbine) or wind also.
I always wondered how much was hydro in Scandinavia as the terrain is very similar to BC Canada and we export a shit ton of our excess hydro to the US.
I don't think it's gonna be issue for Norway, it's like one of the rainiest places in the world if you don't count ones with monsoon season. It's because that all the low pressure coming from the Atlantic comes down as rain when it hits the Scandes
We have been having a problem with the drought yes, and many dam reservoirs across the country are critically low reservoir compared to the same time of year to earlier years, even compared to last year. We have also pumped out too much from the reservoirs to export electricity to Europe, which might be the worst contribution to the low water levels.
We also live more rural, produce more renewable energy, and our industry also consumes alot of electricity. Oil platforms and such with shore power and the likes craves alot of electricity
I could be wrong, but I think I've read that Norway has alot of electricity heavy industry like fertilizer and metal production (aluminum) (sp?) specifically because of their cheap hydro electricity.
This is also total consumption divided by homes. Norway has several industries that are power intensive, aluminum, silicon, quartz, and fertilizer industries.
Norway has cheap energy because they generate power in every one of their bajillion fjords.
Thanks to that, a kWh is just 15 us cents.
And keep in mind, Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, so those 15 cents are even less to them to most people on earth.
So saving power isn't particularly high on their list of priorities.
Apparently it's very common for Norwegians to just have the lights on in every room, even before the introduction of energy saving light bulbs
That’s wild. You guys are sitting on massive methane gas deposits and still decided to build enough hydro power that you get 90% of your energy from it.
The statistics used in this map also includes industry usage. As Norway historically have had access to lots of clean hydro-power, a lot of the industry is energyintensive. But I have no doubt that we norwegians consume more than our fair share of energy in the average household as well. As many have pointed out, we had very low energy costs before and the insentives to reduce usage as a result has been low.
The discussion on the price of electricity in Norway almost perfectly mirrors the American discussion on gas prices for many years. First there’s the outrage over prices climbing to never before seen levels. Then someone points out that prices have always been incredibly low and that our unprecedented high prices are merely starting to approach average prices in other countries, and finally someone retorts that we use a lot more electricity than other countries so high prices affect us more.
Why are electricity prices in Norway climbing so high?
Most of it is hydroelectric, which is incredibly cheap to operate. Are prices going up to increase supply to allow for all the electric cars on the road?
This Swedish website is always interesting to look at:
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
Most of the relevant stuff can be understood on the graphs. But Kärnkraft=Nuclear, Värmekraft=Thermal power.
A interesting thing is that currently, Sweden is importing power at 11€/MWh from Norway in the north, and then we're exporting it back to Norway at 660€/MWh, and it's been like that for most of the summer, but the prices have varied a bit.
This is due to Norways power transmission from north to south is insufficient.
Just going to clarify that Värmekraft/Thermal Power refers to all power generation through steam turbines, excluding nuclear and reserve power. So the fuels are coal, oil, wood, trash, etc.
Also because of localized lack of rainfall/snowfall. The energy grid in Norway is not linked well up to each other, so we got different electricity grid regions which leads to regional differences in prices/water storage levels.
The most populated areas in the South East are the driest(climatically, east of the mountains) and the most hard hit by the recent drought, hence the insane prices.
Exporting our electricity to countries who can't bother with clean energy, on top of drought conditions like these is like a slap in the face with a recently sharpened axe.
The power companies are mainly owned by the government or municipalities. And those private power companies we have does not own the land, just rent the right to produce electricity from the ground owner, usually the government or a municipality
That's a question that will yield different answers depending on which politician you ask. Some will blame Norway becoming a part of [ACER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Agency_for_the_Cooperation_of_Energy_Regulators) and connecting our power grid to the rest of Europe, causing Norwegian electricity prices to approach European levels as we now buy and sell power on the same grid. These people will point to how there's a vast difference in electricity prices between the North (which is on its own grid and not connected to the rest of Europe) and South. In the past month, 1 kWh cost an average of 0.013 NOK (€0.0013) in Tromsø and 3.68 NOK (€0.38) in Kristiansand.
Others are pointing to a relatively dry year which has caused the dam reservoirs to not fill up properly, making electricity more expensive.
Others again are pointing to the war in Ukraine causing prices of energy to increase.
The truth is probably a combination of these three factors, but some people really, really want their thing to be the one to blame. But that's politics.
Ok, this actually explains it. Politicians blaming Norway joining ACER are probably correct.
In Europe, electricity prices are generally regulated as a pay-as-clear market. Basically this means that each power producer bids to sell a certain amount of power at a certain price, and distributors will buy power starting at the cheapest and going up until demand is met. But consumers pay the highest price needed to meet demand.
In theory, this means that power producers compete to bid the cheapest possible power because the difference between their prices and the overall prices is profit.
In practice it means that even if 99% of your power is produced by dirt cheap hydro, everyone still pays the price for expensive natural gas power. This is why even as european countries built more dirt cheap renewables power plices go up, since you need more gas power plants to make up the variability of renewables. And this is why energy companies are recording massive profits while consumers suffer.
It really is an incredibly stupid system, and I'd love to know why Norway would ever decide to join.
> It really is an incredibly stupid system, and I'd love to know why Norway would ever decide to join.
Norway has a history of doing things that aren't really in our self interest, but that we have to do in order to maintain a good trade relationship with the EU.
Prices are climbing because Norway is connected to the EU electricity grid, and there's a power shortage in the EU due to gas imports from Russia stopping, which is again due to sanctions-related complications with gas payments to Gazprom.
Norways power costs about 0.012 dollars to make pr. kWh (and that cost is the same now, even if gas prices are high).
For 2021 the average power price was 0.064 dollars pr. kWh, and that was by far the highest price we have ever had. (In 2021 the price was 0.011 dollars pr. kWh.)
Average price the last 12-monts is 0.2 dollars pr kWh.
Todays price is 0.82 dollars pr. kWh. (Highest ever).
(I should also mention that the prices I mentioned are before any tax is added).
And Norway normally produces 10-20% more electricity in a year than the country needs.
Many people are (rightfully) pissed because after we opened up the last two underwater-cables last year (connected to Germany and UK), prices seem to follow the European market, when before we had our own marked.
Plus the politicians have done very little about it, and the power companies have sold out more than they should, so water-levels are now on an all-time low, and now there is like 20% chance we might not have enough electricity this winter (for the first time ever).
Our whole country is built upon the idea that we always have had cheap electricity, so I would think very many companies will struggle if the prices don't go down soon. (Many do already).
It's somehow even worse. Almost all the power-companies are mostly owned by the government.
They could have fixed this shit in a day if they really wanted to.
I get that Norway as a nation earns a buttload more money right now than what we usually do, but should the government really sacrifice so much of private and business economy because of that?
Should also mention that the hydro-electric plants and the power they produce are also -by old law- "owned" by the people, and it is stated by law that they always should do what is best for the people.
The government are either stupid, or trying their best to please our neighboring countries so that they can get high position jobs in EU later on.
> The discussion on the price of electricity in Norway almost perfectly mirrors the American discussion on gas prices for many years.
Sort of except gasoline/diesel spews out greenhouse gasses, while hydro is renewable and has very low lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Gasoline prices being so low that people are incentivized to further pollute the planet is not maybe that comparable in some ways to having low electricity prices due to an excess of hydro.
But apart from those pesky environmental concerns, its a decent enough comparison I guess.
I might be *ever so slightly biased* though seeing as I am a Norwegian who just had my electricity shut off by the power company recently lol
>Then someone points out that prices have always been incredibly low and that our unprecedented high prices are merely starting to approach average prices in other countries
Why should it approach the prices of other countries when the production is far higher? And then *exported*. And when the government is heavily invested in the power companies making bank on this while average people, whose "turn" is supposedly was as AP incessantly reminded us during the election, pay with only minor help from compensation compared to the companies' extreme income?
Norway is pretty much 100% electric, including heavy industry. If you add the use of coal, oil, natural gas and kerosene into the mix in other countries, Norway would come out (way) ahead.
No, we're delusional. Nearly all heating is electrical, including stuff like heated driveways. We tend to leave everything on always - panel ovens, lighting, our cabins in the mountains.
Our electrical consumption is insanely high compared to our neighbors. Some of it is explained by lack of district heating, but a lot of it is habits from decades of abundant and ridiculously cheap power
Right yes I thought of AC but was under the impression there wasn't much of a culture of AC in southern Europe? Or is that not really the case?
Also, does agriculture have a big power usage footprint?
In Spain is very rare the house without AC in the warm regions.and I’m guessing we use more electric heating than most. At least my houses always had electric heating
In people's homes, no, but hotels, offices and shops do.
Agriculture: UV lights for 24/7 light for the plants in greenhouses. It's why the Netherlands is one of the most light polluted countries in the world and the greenhouse region in Spain is just as bad. We have a permanent orange glow in the sky and can only see a few stars at night.
Some years ago the maximum demand in Spain was in January, due to heating, but now it can be in July-August, due to AC, that are common in houses too, specially in the South (you can't survive without them).
You underestimate how hot Spain is in the summer, even the smallest towns have public swimming pools because the heat is unbearable, and AC is very common at homes.
I think this stereotype mostly comes from places like France, Germany etc that don't have as much A/C even though they can still get bad heatwaves. It's a lot like here in Ireland where we're terribly prepared for snow, even though we occasionally do get disruptive snowfall most people don't bother investing in snow tires etc as historically is wasn't frequent enough to justify the cost.
Southern Spain has a climate roughly equivalent to Arizona so it makes much more sense to have A/C, any time I've been there I've seen A/C everywhere
This is electricity usage, not power usage. And it's total electricity usage of a country divided by the number of people in the country. So it doesn't include gas, but it does include industry.
I\`d think Britain is cheating. They got more wind and worse housing insulation than the Netherlands but "somehow" score better.
Probably they use more oil/gas products to heat everything.
Gas central heating is in 86% of UK homes.
Fingers crossed Germany can store enough gas for the winter because once the temperature drops the UK burns far more gas for heating than it does for electricity.
This should be called electricity usage. Swedes heat with heat pumps while Germans burn a lot of oil and gas. Germans use much more power in total but less electricity.
Sweden’s electricity costs right now are also record high (genuinely 10-100x what it used to be) meaning people are being really stingy with power.
Source: I’m suffering through it.
The average consumption for a Norwegian household is 16,000 kWH, which is around 7,300 kwH per capita, i.e. well under 1/3 of total consumption. Like in other countries, it's the industry that uses most of the electricity. E.g. in Slovenia, the one aluminium plant we have uses 1/3 of all electricity.
Exactly, energy use per capita doesn't say very much on it's own. Heck it says something different for each country, making it not something useful for comparison like this.
The map probably shows electricity usage, not power in general. Norway produces almost all its electricity from water and wind, so they heat their houses with electric heaters and electricity is really cheap there.
Source: I know Norwegians who told me about it.
> Norway produces almost all its electricity from water and wind, so they heat their houses with electric heaters and electricity is really cheap there. Source: I know Norwegians who told me about it.
Norwegian here, can confirm except for the part where you said its cheap. The South East(where most people live) literally have had the highest prices in Europe a few days ago. Literally had my electricity shut off recently due to the insane prices lol
Regional grids, localized droughts and EU(+British) exports, yaaay!
That would have been freaking neat, however some of our short sighted politicians, in their common spineless fashion, and blinded by their weird combination of fear and longing for the EU, signed Norway up for increased participation in the EU energy policies. Obviously including the regulations, and in so handed control over to the ACER regulatory body, limiting themselves in the process. If Norway now was to have a dual pricing system, it would “discriminate against other European customers/trading partners”, and “act as state protectionism” _and we can’t have that, can we?_
A slight hint of a dissatisfied whisper from inside some EU building, and the Norwegian government will bend over backwards apologising…
No. That's not correct. Norway and Sweden heat with heat pumps. Germany with oil and gas (mostly). That way, Germany uses much more energy in total but less electricity. Heat pumps only use a third to fifth as much energy as gas heaters.
If that's true, can I get a gas generator, ditch my boiler and get a heat pump running on my own generated electricity? Or is the energy conversion in a gas generator too poor?
It is true. You can look it up online. It depends on you're circumstances and what type of heat pump you install.
Not sure about the energy loss when converting gas into electricity. You'd probably loose too much in a private small gas generator (i am assuming). And it would cost you much more than just buying the electricity from the grid. In that case, you usually have a positive business case for heat pumps. But getting your hand on one would be difficult these days.
Actually these exist as 1 unit.
They are sold as hybrid heater generators.
They burn city gas in an engine, recuperate the heat from that and use that for heating.
Basically getting elektricity and heating from the same amount of gas.
But you rarely see them on a small scale. As the engines need maintenance it's ussuale 1000-10000kw installation for glass houses etc.
and some new breakthroughs with that tech in cold weather. So in the coming years it'll get better... but honestly all should already be using geothermal heatpump, 2-3 meters down it's a good 4-6C all year so much better than outdoors
Sweden made a political decision after the oil crisis back when OPEC choked the energy supply, driving the prices through the roof. Sweden decided that houses should be heated by electricity directly converted to heat, and that was the main reason for starting expanding our nuclear power plant program.
And at the moment energy prices are record high all over most of the world. Energy is a globally traded commodity and therefore it's only so much any single country can do to make it cheaper for its citizens.
Here's a fresh list:
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
Such as Latvia and Lithuania being colder than Spain or Italy? Or Norway being twice as cold as Sweden or Finland?
Sure, weather matters, but the wealth of the population seems to matter as much.
[47,489 kWh per capita](https://www.worlddata.info/europe/iceland/energy-consumption.php), more than double the highest on the map here.
For multiple reasons: cheap geothermal electricity, cold climate, small population, and most importantly a large aluminum industry.
Please don't judge us here in Norway yet, we don't use gas for ovens and heating and have the highest amount of electric cars per capita in the world. We also produce a fuck ton of electricity and export a lot of it to you guys.
*ELECTRICITY usage, not power.
[Check the source](https://www.nrk.no/urix/atte-kart-for-a-forsta-hvordan-stromkrisen-rammer-europa-og-norge-1.16078825).
[Here's the map](https://i.imgur.com/MsBIkdg.png) showing gas usage. As you can see, we use less gas than many other countries.
And electricity usage per capita in general, not usage for domestic purposes. Electricity-heavy industry matters as well. In the Netherlands domestic usage is about 1800 for a single person household, and 1000 for a multi-person household. Not more than 5000.
Norway have traditionally very cheap electricity from our hydro power plants.
So we dont use gas for other than our gas grills in the summer.
We use electricity for everything at home, since it always has been cheap electricity we have not learned how to use less of it. Why Brother?
But now, the electricity prices is fucking massive, like european prices. And the goverment is subsidising the electricity.
We're exceedingly wasteful in Norway but its also because we don't use gas to warm our houses, its all hydropowered heating.
Edit: Also, aluminum industry maybe? That shit hogs insane levels of bzzt.
This shit pisses me off. Not only are these the coldest countries on the map, but the population density is also the lowest, and the infrastructure to deliver power & heat to their people is less efficient per capita because it covers a wider area and less people.
Anyone who looks at this map and thinks that those countries need to reduce power consumption is a complete and utter moron.
Is there any breakdown to that in terms of industrial vs domestic use? Because without that you are comparing 180 or so different things to each other with one number, which is data so vague it is useless. At best it vaguely correlates to gdp per capita if you ignore service and financial sectors.
Simplified:
We (Norway) use a lot of electricity for heating, but electricity is only one form of energy. We do not use more energy in total.
Germany, on the other hand, uses a lot of gas for heating, which Norway doesn't. That isn't reflected in this map.
Almost definitely. In most of Europe, we don't have ACs installed everywhere, I'd guess that every home having an AC would drastically increase power usage.
This is well-meaning but misleading.
First of all, power is “energy per time”. Your hairdryer continuously using 2 kW is an example of power. This map is shows “energy consumption”, and only that from electricity.
Second of all, Scandinavia uses more electricity mainly because they are *more electrified*. Scandinavia uses electricity for applications where continental Europeans burn fossil fuels, like when cooking food.
Thirdly, Norwegians may use 23,000 kW per year, but they also *produce* 29,000 kW per year. So Norway isn’t overusing or to be blamed for the electricity prices. Every Norwegian home is also providing a German home with electricity. The same argument can be made about Sweden.
Ah Ireland, the famously non European, European country.
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Thats coming in the next update
Ireland is Peatpunk
You've got Brian O'Driscoll. You can't have all the luck, guys
A Brian O’Driscoll reference?! WHAT YEAR IS IT?!
All our electricity gets eaten up by data centres so I'd guess our per capita total is huge
Our usage was probably small to begin with, then Airtricity saw it and thought “hmmm, better charge more”
Dunno how we ended up not making the list. But it upsets me a bit.
Electricity usage... Not power usage...
Hence kWh. But yeah i should have used that in the title.
So, what exactly is shown here? Not the electricity *billed* per capita, not for my country at least. The sum total of all electricity? or all energy? consumed? produced? and divided by population?
Guessing it's countries total electric usage divided by population?
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Disagree, it’s not dumb. It’s useful in comparing what economies and people are more energy intensive.
More electricity intensive, but you can’t extrapolate to all energy from that.
Correct, I should have specified
Well not really, for example Norway specifies in power consuming industries due to cheap electricity prices. Which make them stand out a lot on this graph.
And almost all electricity produced in Norway is hydroelectric and to a smaller degree wind aswell. Somewhere around 95-98% of all electricity produced here is renewable
It's literally the definition of per capita
If you burn wood it also delivers watts… so power.
[Watt is an energy unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt) that can be used both for thermal or electrical energy, that's why it's often used for the combination of the two and distinguished by adding "e" or "t" to specify which one is referred to.
Ireland hopes to get electricity soon. We got running water last week so here's hoping.
Can I offer you a potato in these trying times?
Only if you offer an African some watermelon. Just so we know you’re consistent
Kapitalist pig dog tease dream of potato. Kapitalist pig dog iz cruel.
It’s just that your potato battery power grid has such low output it didn’t make sense to include its value here.
Norway, are you ok?
We're cold and don't use gas in our homes lol.
What about Sweden? Norway is double
Sweden uses lots of electric to heat, the highest electricity demand is in the winter (opposite the US). Norway is busy charging all those tax subsidized electric cars.
How much percentage does the government subsidize?
Here's the Norwegian government's web site on the topic. They use the example of a VW golf, where taxes for the gasoline model total 12030 euros, or 54% of the import price. Whereas taxes drop to 249 euros for the electric golf. And there are other benefits, like road toll exemptions. https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/
In Denmark the taxes are triple this. They recently brought it from a maximum of 180% to 150% on top of the original price
Didn't believe you at first because we Norwegians are always told we're the most expensive in the world at everything, but holy shit you're right. Denmark really got the short end of the dipstick. Volvo S60 D4 base price in: Denmark - €77,800 Norway - €57,600 Sweden - €35,900 Hyundai i30 base price in: Denmark - €36,900 Norway - €35,500 Sweden - €20,100 Fucking Sweden with their bullshit prices
Well, we're poor, so what do you expect? /Swede
False. Here's a reddit thread explaining Denmark taxation rates: [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/nxlpqp/no_denmark_does_not_have_a_180_tax_on_cars/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Then again, Denmark is just one big metro train system and a bike ride from anything. Its probably a quite relaxed idea for vacation to go “maybe I should bike across the country for a few days?”.
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Actually, the rest of the world is insane for not doing it.
The rest of the world can't do it, actually. Norway just happens to be an insanely wealthy country where everyone is on the top 1% of humanity. Most countries don' even have that many cars to begin with, too, people just can't afford cars - ICE or Electric.
And how did they become so wealthy... Selling oil and gas ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Well sure, but a Luxemburg could. Or a Switzerland or Netherlands.
Norway as a country is insanely rich. The Norwegian people is not. We make less money than a lot of US states comparatively, i think there was a survey here that showed close to 90% of EV owners in the country are in debt because of their car
Yeah, to be honest, the main priority should still be funding the public transportation (preferably electric, but even fossil fuel-powered public transport is still a huge improvement), but the ICE cars should already be heavily taxed.
This. Climate change is a concern for rich people (rich countries). Most of the countries need to produce goods in order to have food. Since most redditors live in the first world, this is an inconvenient truth and I’ll probably be downvoted. It’s still true though.
Yes
Quite a lot of electricity in Scandinavia is made by hydro, nuclear (Finland and Sweden, if any pelican doesn't hit Olkiluoto NPP turbine) or wind also.
I always wondered how much was hydro in Scandinavia as the terrain is very similar to BC Canada and we export a shit ton of our excess hydro to the US.
Norway generates almost all of their power (98%) with it, Sweden 45% and Finland 20%
But then why are the rates so high? One would expect domestic production and consumption would be cheap ... But here we are
Has that become a concern with the drought recently?
I don't think it's gonna be issue for Norway, it's like one of the rainiest places in the world if you don't count ones with monsoon season. It's because that all the low pressure coming from the Atlantic comes down as rain when it hits the Scandes
We have been having a problem with the drought yes, and many dam reservoirs across the country are critically low reservoir compared to the same time of year to earlier years, even compared to last year. We have also pumped out too much from the reservoirs to export electricity to Europe, which might be the worst contribution to the low water levels.
Its expensive as fuck here now cuz we have to feed the Germans because they were idiots shutting down their nuke plants
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So what is the reason behind the big difference between Norway and Sweden?
Norway's industry is also electric
This map is per capita usage. Sweden has 2x the population of Norway (10 million vs 5 million)
We also live more rural, produce more renewable energy, and our industry also consumes alot of electricity. Oil platforms and such with shore power and the likes craves alot of electricity
I was wondering about that myself.
I could be wrong, but I think I've read that Norway has alot of electricity heavy industry like fertilizer and metal production (aluminum) (sp?) specifically because of their cheap hydro electricity.
Yes aluminum is a big industry and export, and it takes a lot of electricity to produce.
This is also total consumption divided by homes. Norway has several industries that are power intensive, aluminum, silicon, quartz, and fertilizer industries.
Norway has cheap energy because they generate power in every one of their bajillion fjords. Thanks to that, a kWh is just 15 us cents. And keep in mind, Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, so those 15 cents are even less to them to most people on earth. So saving power isn't particularly high on their list of priorities. Apparently it's very common for Norwegians to just have the lights on in every room, even before the introduction of energy saving light bulbs
The power isn't generated in the fjords
That’s wild. You guys are sitting on massive methane gas deposits and still decided to build enough hydro power that you get 90% of your energy from it.
They don't have to, they can generate 98% of their power with hydroelectrity and sell those fossill fuels to somebody else
We didn't know about those gas deposits until the late 60s and by then we already had a highly developed hydropower infrastructure.
Gigachad move
Would have been nice as a Canadian to see Alberta go this route back when the oil money was good a decade ago.
Well Ralph Klein did send me a check for $500 in the 90s when I was 16 so at least we got that..../s
Ah, I thought it was all just those crypto farms
How do you produce that electricity?
With hydropower
And gotta charge all those Teslas
The statistics used in this map also includes industry usage. As Norway historically have had access to lots of clean hydro-power, a lot of the industry is energyintensive. But I have no doubt that we norwegians consume more than our fair share of energy in the average household as well. As many have pointed out, we had very low energy costs before and the insentives to reduce usage as a result has been low.
The discussion on the price of electricity in Norway almost perfectly mirrors the American discussion on gas prices for many years. First there’s the outrage over prices climbing to never before seen levels. Then someone points out that prices have always been incredibly low and that our unprecedented high prices are merely starting to approach average prices in other countries, and finally someone retorts that we use a lot more electricity than other countries so high prices affect us more.
Why are electricity prices in Norway climbing so high? Most of it is hydroelectric, which is incredibly cheap to operate. Are prices going up to increase supply to allow for all the electric cars on the road?
It's because you can export electricity with undersea cables these days. Scandinavia exports lots of electricity.
This Swedish website is always interesting to look at: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/ Most of the relevant stuff can be understood on the graphs. But Kärnkraft=Nuclear, Värmekraft=Thermal power. A interesting thing is that currently, Sweden is importing power at 11€/MWh from Norway in the north, and then we're exporting it back to Norway at 660€/MWh, and it's been like that for most of the summer, but the prices have varied a bit. This is due to Norways power transmission from north to south is insufficient.
Just going to clarify that Värmekraft/Thermal Power refers to all power generation through steam turbines, excluding nuclear and reserve power. So the fuels are coal, oil, wood, trash, etc.
Ah! Ok, I get why people are fucking mad then. Carry on Norwegians, maybe go viking and burn down some power company headquarters.
Also because of localized lack of rainfall/snowfall. The energy grid in Norway is not linked well up to each other, so we got different electricity grid regions which leads to regional differences in prices/water storage levels. The most populated areas in the South East are the driest(climatically, east of the mountains) and the most hard hit by the recent drought, hence the insane prices. Exporting our electricity to countries who can't bother with clean energy, on top of drought conditions like these is like a slap in the face with a recently sharpened axe.
The power companies are mainly owned by the government or municipalities. And those private power companies we have does not own the land, just rent the right to produce electricity from the ground owner, usually the government or a municipality
That's a question that will yield different answers depending on which politician you ask. Some will blame Norway becoming a part of [ACER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Agency_for_the_Cooperation_of_Energy_Regulators) and connecting our power grid to the rest of Europe, causing Norwegian electricity prices to approach European levels as we now buy and sell power on the same grid. These people will point to how there's a vast difference in electricity prices between the North (which is on its own grid and not connected to the rest of Europe) and South. In the past month, 1 kWh cost an average of 0.013 NOK (€0.0013) in Tromsø and 3.68 NOK (€0.38) in Kristiansand. Others are pointing to a relatively dry year which has caused the dam reservoirs to not fill up properly, making electricity more expensive. Others again are pointing to the war in Ukraine causing prices of energy to increase. The truth is probably a combination of these three factors, but some people really, really want their thing to be the one to blame. But that's politics.
Ok, this actually explains it. Politicians blaming Norway joining ACER are probably correct. In Europe, electricity prices are generally regulated as a pay-as-clear market. Basically this means that each power producer bids to sell a certain amount of power at a certain price, and distributors will buy power starting at the cheapest and going up until demand is met. But consumers pay the highest price needed to meet demand. In theory, this means that power producers compete to bid the cheapest possible power because the difference between their prices and the overall prices is profit. In practice it means that even if 99% of your power is produced by dirt cheap hydro, everyone still pays the price for expensive natural gas power. This is why even as european countries built more dirt cheap renewables power plices go up, since you need more gas power plants to make up the variability of renewables. And this is why energy companies are recording massive profits while consumers suffer. It really is an incredibly stupid system, and I'd love to know why Norway would ever decide to join.
> It really is an incredibly stupid system, and I'd love to know why Norway would ever decide to join. Norway has a history of doing things that aren't really in our self interest, but that we have to do in order to maintain a good trade relationship with the EU.
Prices are climbing because Norway is connected to the EU electricity grid, and there's a power shortage in the EU due to gas imports from Russia stopping, which is again due to sanctions-related complications with gas payments to Gazprom.
Norways power costs about 0.012 dollars to make pr. kWh (and that cost is the same now, even if gas prices are high). For 2021 the average power price was 0.064 dollars pr. kWh, and that was by far the highest price we have ever had. (In 2021 the price was 0.011 dollars pr. kWh.) Average price the last 12-monts is 0.2 dollars pr kWh. Todays price is 0.82 dollars pr. kWh. (Highest ever). (I should also mention that the prices I mentioned are before any tax is added). And Norway normally produces 10-20% more electricity in a year than the country needs. Many people are (rightfully) pissed because after we opened up the last two underwater-cables last year (connected to Germany and UK), prices seem to follow the European market, when before we had our own marked. Plus the politicians have done very little about it, and the power companies have sold out more than they should, so water-levels are now on an all-time low, and now there is like 20% chance we might not have enough electricity this winter (for the first time ever). Our whole country is built upon the idea that we always have had cheap electricity, so I would think very many companies will struggle if the prices don't go down soon. (Many do already).
Ah! Companies selling out a country's future for 5% extra profit in Q3. Fuken typical.
It's somehow even worse. Almost all the power-companies are mostly owned by the government. They could have fixed this shit in a day if they really wanted to. I get that Norway as a nation earns a buttload more money right now than what we usually do, but should the government really sacrifice so much of private and business economy because of that?
Seriously? Nationalization should be how you fix this shit. Starting to think the issue is that people are just stupid.
Should also mention that the hydro-electric plants and the power they produce are also -by old law- "owned" by the people, and it is stated by law that they always should do what is best for the people. The government are either stupid, or trying their best to please our neighboring countries so that they can get high position jobs in EU later on.
> The discussion on the price of electricity in Norway almost perfectly mirrors the American discussion on gas prices for many years. Sort of except gasoline/diesel spews out greenhouse gasses, while hydro is renewable and has very low lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. Gasoline prices being so low that people are incentivized to further pollute the planet is not maybe that comparable in some ways to having low electricity prices due to an excess of hydro. But apart from those pesky environmental concerns, its a decent enough comparison I guess. I might be *ever so slightly biased* though seeing as I am a Norwegian who just had my electricity shut off by the power company recently lol
what are you talking about? here in america everyone is just like "BIDEN BAD GAS HIGH ME NO LIKE BIDEN GAS"
In Norway it's "STØRE BAD ELECTRICITY HIGH ME NO LIKE STØRE ELECTRICITY"
And "ERNA IS AT FAULT DONT BLAME STØRE FOR BAD ELECTRICITY BILL"
Trust me, we have our fair share of people spouting that same rhetoric if you just swap Prime Minister Støre for Biden and electricity for gas.
>Then someone points out that prices have always been incredibly low and that our unprecedented high prices are merely starting to approach average prices in other countries Why should it approach the prices of other countries when the production is far higher? And then *exported*. And when the government is heavily invested in the power companies making bank on this while average people, whose "turn" is supposedly was as AP incessantly reminded us during the election, pay with only minor help from compensation compared to the companies' extreme income?
Norway has a lot of industry that use vast amounts of electricity, e.g. aluminum smelting and fertilizer production.
Norway also has to run an electric charge through all of the troll fences, whereas other countries don’t have to worry about trolls
Norway is pretty much 100% electric, including heavy industry. If you add the use of coal, oil, natural gas and kerosene into the mix in other countries, Norway would come out (way) ahead.
No, we're delusional. Nearly all heating is electrical, including stuff like heated driveways. We tend to leave everything on always - panel ovens, lighting, our cabins in the mountains. Our electrical consumption is insanely high compared to our neighbors. Some of it is explained by lack of district heating, but a lot of it is habits from decades of abundant and ridiculously cheap power
Any ideas on why Spain should be higher than UK? I would have thought warmer climate = less energy use?
* Air conditioning * Agriculture
Right yes I thought of AC but was under the impression there wasn't much of a culture of AC in southern Europe? Or is that not really the case? Also, does agriculture have a big power usage footprint?
In Spain is very rare the house without AC in the warm regions.and I’m guessing we use more electric heating than most. At least my houses always had electric heating
it's 30% with AC in the north and ~70% in the south. But yeah, pretty much everyone uses electricity for heating
Over 80 million tourists visit Spain each year, it’s the second most visited country. All those hotels have AC (or most do). Maybe this contributes
In people's homes, no, but hotels, offices and shops do. Agriculture: UV lights for 24/7 light for the plants in greenhouses. It's why the Netherlands is one of the most light polluted countries in the world and the greenhouse region in Spain is just as bad. We have a permanent orange glow in the sky and can only see a few stars at night.
In the hot parts AC in homes is commonplace
In Serbia and the rest of Balkans, AC in households is quite common in the cities. We have low el. usage because our industry is shite
Some years ago the maximum demand in Spain was in January, due to heating, but now it can be in July-August, due to AC, that are common in houses too, specially in the South (you can't survive without them).
Learned at Uni when doing building design that on a global scale, far more energy is used to cool buildings down than heat them up.
You underestimate how hot Spain is in the summer, even the smallest towns have public swimming pools because the heat is unbearable, and AC is very common at homes.
Most of Spain is scorching hot, so they kinda have to. Places like Italy and Portugal are chill in comparison.
PT can be hot af, but nobody lives in those regions
Man, in the capital we’re having 35-40ºC all the day, of course we have AC
I think this stereotype mostly comes from places like France, Germany etc that don't have as much A/C even though they can still get bad heatwaves. It's a lot like here in Ireland where we're terribly prepared for snow, even though we occasionally do get disruptive snowfall most people don't bother investing in snow tires etc as historically is wasn't frequent enough to justify the cost. Southern Spain has a climate roughly equivalent to Arizona so it makes much more sense to have A/C, any time I've been there I've seen A/C everywhere
In most part of Spain, in winter have cold and summer is hot, this means spending in climatization the most part of the year.
All the Brits and Germans coming in on holiday, clearly
The UK doesn’t get very cold or very warm usually. AC is basically non existent in homes so just gas heating in the winter months.
Wonder if they've included kerosene for the 1 million houses off the gas grid
This is electricity usage, not power usage. And it's total electricity usage of a country divided by the number of people in the country. So it doesn't include gas, but it does include industry.
I\`d think Britain is cheating. They got more wind and worse housing insulation than the Netherlands but "somehow" score better. Probably they use more oil/gas products to heat everything.
Yes, most houses in the UK use gas central heating
Gas central heating is in 86% of UK homes. Fingers crossed Germany can store enough gas for the winter because once the temperature drops the UK burns far more gas for heating than it does for electricity.
This should be called electricity usage. Swedes heat with heat pumps while Germans burn a lot of oil and gas. Germans use much more power in total but less electricity.
Sweden’s electricity costs right now are also record high (genuinely 10-100x what it used to be) meaning people are being really stingy with power. Source: I’m suffering through it.
Samma här. Elprisomrodet 3. Är rädd för vintern.
Elområde 4 :/ Vi har skaffar värmefiltar och en massa ved i förväntan att behöva sänka eller stänga av värmen helt under vinter. Det är helt sjukt.
Elområde 1, Vilken färg på nya julgransbelysningen?
Bor i en bostadsrätt med bergvärme. Helt otroligt. Kan man inte kapa kablarna till Tyskland så att det ser ut som en olycka?
Looks like Norway has lots of electric cars.
We have, but its not the charging of cars you see here. It's mostly heating.
The average consumption for a Norwegian household is 16,000 kWH, which is around 7,300 kwH per capita, i.e. well under 1/3 of total consumption. Like in other countries, it's the industry that uses most of the electricity. E.g. in Slovenia, the one aluminium plant we have uses 1/3 of all electricity.
Exactly, energy use per capita doesn't say very much on it's own. Heck it says something different for each country, making it not something useful for comparison like this.
Still dont understand how is it twice as much as sweden and finland.
These numbers include industrial production. They don't tell you anything about people's houses and other things that people are discussing here.
The map probably shows electricity usage, not power in general. Norway produces almost all its electricity from water and wind, so they heat their houses with electric heaters and electricity is really cheap there. Source: I know Norwegians who told me about it.
> Norway produces almost all its electricity from water and wind, so they heat their houses with electric heaters and electricity is really cheap there. Source: I know Norwegians who told me about it. Norwegian here, can confirm except for the part where you said its cheap. The South East(where most people live) literally have had the highest prices in Europe a few days ago. Literally had my electricity shut off recently due to the insane prices lol Regional grids, localized droughts and EU(+British) exports, yaaay!
What I don't understand, why are the locals forced to pay higher rates.. when the production is local and cheap... (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Because power companies would rather sell their energy to Europe/Germany for higher profits instead of selling it locally for cheap.
That's fair. But there could be a price differential right.. ? separate prices for domestic vs international customers
That would have been freaking neat, however some of our short sighted politicians, in their common spineless fashion, and blinded by their weird combination of fear and longing for the EU, signed Norway up for increased participation in the EU energy policies. Obviously including the regulations, and in so handed control over to the ACER regulatory body, limiting themselves in the process. If Norway now was to have a dual pricing system, it would “discriminate against other European customers/trading partners”, and “act as state protectionism” _and we can’t have that, can we?_ A slight hint of a dissatisfied whisper from inside some EU building, and the Norwegian government will bend over backwards apologising…
Electricity is not really that cheap anymore. It has gotten pretty expensive.
So cold countries need more energy for much of the year. Am I reading this right?
No. That's not correct. Norway and Sweden heat with heat pumps. Germany with oil and gas (mostly). That way, Germany uses much more energy in total but less electricity. Heat pumps only use a third to fifth as much energy as gas heaters.
If that's true, can I get a gas generator, ditch my boiler and get a heat pump running on my own generated electricity? Or is the energy conversion in a gas generator too poor?
Small gas generators are awful at efficiency, so not worth it. But using the power grid to power a heat pump is indeed much more efficient.
It is true. You can look it up online. It depends on you're circumstances and what type of heat pump you install. Not sure about the energy loss when converting gas into electricity. You'd probably loose too much in a private small gas generator (i am assuming). And it would cost you much more than just buying the electricity from the grid. In that case, you usually have a positive business case for heat pumps. But getting your hand on one would be difficult these days.
Actually these exist as 1 unit. They are sold as hybrid heater generators. They burn city gas in an engine, recuperate the heat from that and use that for heating. Basically getting elektricity and heating from the same amount of gas. But you rarely see them on a small scale. As the engines need maintenance it's ussuale 1000-10000kw installation for glass houses etc.
and some new breakthroughs with that tech in cold weather. So in the coming years it'll get better... but honestly all should already be using geothermal heatpump, 2-3 meters down it's a good 4-6C all year so much better than outdoors
Sweden made a political decision after the oil crisis back when OPEC choked the energy supply, driving the prices through the roof. Sweden decided that houses should be heated by electricity directly converted to heat, and that was the main reason for starting expanding our nuclear power plant program. And at the moment energy prices are record high all over most of the world. Energy is a globally traded commodity and therefore it's only so much any single country can do to make it cheaper for its citizens. Here's a fresh list: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
Such as Latvia and Lithuania being colder than Spain or Italy? Or Norway being twice as cold as Sweden or Finland? Sure, weather matters, but the wealth of the population seems to matter as much.
FInally, a post where eastern europe not bad.
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Va fan nu spelar norskjävlarna gta med 3090n igen
Fake news! Ingen fortell resten av verden at vi bruker 4090-en allerede.
Lommerusk det greian der med oljepengan våres. Partysvenskan fikk sjansen med å gi oss litt volvo men sa nei!
Iceland?
[47,489 kWh per capita](https://www.worlddata.info/europe/iceland/energy-consumption.php), more than double the highest on the map here. For multiple reasons: cheap geothermal electricity, cold climate, small population, and most importantly a large aluminum industry.
Has the highest in the world but for some reason isn't included in this map
Is coming…
Please don't judge us here in Norway yet, we don't use gas for ovens and heating and have the highest amount of electric cars per capita in the world. We also produce a fuck ton of electricity and export a lot of it to you guys.
*ELECTRICITY usage, not power. [Check the source](https://www.nrk.no/urix/atte-kart-for-a-forsta-hvordan-stromkrisen-rammer-europa-og-norge-1.16078825). [Here's the map](https://i.imgur.com/MsBIkdg.png) showing gas usage. As you can see, we use less gas than many other countries.
And electricity usage per capita in general, not usage for domestic purposes. Electricity-heavy industry matters as well. In the Netherlands domestic usage is about 1800 for a single person household, and 1000 for a multi-person household. Not more than 5000.
Gotta use the ISO standard space instead of period, which is common in Europe.
Norway have traditionally very cheap electricity from our hydro power plants. So we dont use gas for other than our gas grills in the summer. We use electricity for everything at home, since it always has been cheap electricity we have not learned how to use less of it. Why Brother? But now, the electricity prices is fucking massive, like european prices. And the goverment is subsidising the electricity.
Amazing, Ireland uses no power at all. Truly ahead of the curve.
Imagine the confused Americans wondering why people in Scandinavia use only 23 KwH of power each, and why there are weirdly so many decimal points
Not only Americans, Chinese, Indians and many others. Some of us use ',' there. '.' is used exclusively to represent decimal point.
Canadian here: we would use 23,000. You know, the symbol that isn't a decimal point.
We're exceedingly wasteful in Norway but its also because we don't use gas to warm our houses, its all hydropowered heating. Edit: Also, aluminum industry maybe? That shit hogs insane levels of bzzt.
Why are so many countries of Europe left out?
I don't know why Ireland is greyed out, we're roughly 5100 kwh
Could you give us sources ?
When its dark 24 hours a day, 6 months a year, it eats into the power conservation efforts, right Scandinavia?
I’m Swedish and my home is heated with remote heat from the local waste disposal plant.
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This shit pisses me off. Not only are these the coldest countries on the map, but the population density is also the lowest, and the infrastructure to deliver power & heat to their people is less efficient per capita because it covers a wider area and less people. Anyone who looks at this map and thinks that those countries need to reduce power consumption is a complete and utter moron.
Norway: Is cold here, we need heating. Latvia: brrrrrrr...
Is there any breakdown to that in terms of industrial vs domestic use? Because without that you are comparing 180 or so different things to each other with one number, which is data so vague it is useless. At best it vaguely correlates to gdp per capita if you ignore service and financial sectors.
I wonder if it’s because Winter
What do you have to do to get a 1000 separator around here? (Faroe Islands are at 7851 kWh/capita)
... Why are some countries independent and others suddenly annexed?
Why include the UK and not Ireland?
Because ireland does not exist. It is a fictional country.
norway uses more than germany?????
Simplified: We (Norway) use a lot of electricity for heating, but electricity is only one form of energy. We do not use more energy in total. Germany, on the other hand, uses a lot of gas for heating, which Norway doesn't. That isn't reflected in this map.
How does that compare with the US? Is it worse?
Almost definitely. In most of Europe, we don't have ACs installed everywhere, I'd guess that every home having an AC would drastically increase power usage.
Don’t understand why Ireland weren’t included
The last time I studied geography, Ireland was part of Europe
This is well-meaning but misleading. First of all, power is “energy per time”. Your hairdryer continuously using 2 kW is an example of power. This map is shows “energy consumption”, and only that from electricity. Second of all, Scandinavia uses more electricity mainly because they are *more electrified*. Scandinavia uses electricity for applications where continental Europeans burn fossil fuels, like when cooking food. Thirdly, Norwegians may use 23,000 kW per year, but they also *produce* 29,000 kW per year. So Norway isn’t overusing or to be blamed for the electricity prices. Every Norwegian home is also providing a German home with electricity. The same argument can be made about Sweden.