- These are the world's
first all-electric, passenger ferries. So, what are these men
doing? Take a guess. - They're about to charge it? - I was talking to the
audience, but yes, Dusty- that's right. This is one of Oslo's
all-electric ferries, and it only takes six
minutes to charge the battery for this ship's 60-minute round trip. What you're about to see is the complicated way
these ferries get charged. Yeah, I was surprised, too. That's it. How freaking simple is that? We are in Oslo to explore
how they are electrifying, essentially, all of their transportation. - Look at that crazy dude.
He's skiing on asphalt. Holy s***! I've never seen that before. - Oslo is electrifying,
essentially, everything. Trams, buses, cars,
ferries, bikes, scooters- and they're doing this
because they have some of the most audacious
climate emissions cut goals in the world. Like, for real. By 2030, Oslo's climate budget calls for a nearly 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
compared to 2009 levels. These targets actually put Oslo in line with the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by the Paris Agreement. Norway is seen as one of
the most sustainable places in the world. Yet, paradoxically, its largest
industry is oil and gas, and it's made them incredibly rich- but more on that later. Oslo's government is investing heavily in key sectors they think can help them reach their emissions goals. The construction and transportation
sectors together account for 67% of emissions in Oslo. So we came here to see how
they're electrifying everything from construction sites down to scooters. Norway has the most electric vehicles of any country in the world, so we're gonna call an Uber to take us to our filming site today, and we're gonna see if it's electric. - Well, maybe we'll get the electric car. - Yeah. - All right.
- Yeah. - We got our Tesla. - So I got one too. Yeah, it's gonna take a
little while to get here. We headed out from our hotel
to visit our first location, a construction site. - Nice to meet you. Jason. - Hendrik, yeah.
- How are you doing? We wanted to see the
machines, tools, and methods that Oslo was using to make the transition towards clean construction. Oslo has mandated that by 2025, all municipal construction
sites have to be zero emission. This construction site is
already fully electric. Even the vehicles that bring the workers in and out are electric vehicles. With construction alone
responsible for 20% of emissions, Oslo began paying more for
municipal construction projects to help incentivize the creation of an electric construction
equipment industry. We're ready for you to
show us around the site. - Yeah, all right. - This is Kai Vegard Ostnes? I am really sorry, Kai. - Yeah, that was good, huh? Yeah, that was some good Norwegian? - Yeah. - Upwards. - So this is an excavator,
and this is fully electric. - This is electric, yes. - It is noticeably quieter. - This is the power
core for the excavator. This has approximately 50 meters in cable. - Okay. - That automatically goes in and out. You can see inside here. - Oh, wow.
- This is the control unit. - So this itself, this is not a battery. This is connecting this- - This is not a battery. - To the power grid. - Yes. - That's very cool. - This is why I love my job. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Can I ask you a question? What's the difference for you in operating this versus
a gas-powered one? - Technically, no difference, but just have this cable
you need to be careful with. - I mean, is it a pain in
the a** being connected? - Okay. So what is this machine? - That's a compactor to make ground solid. - So this is electric? - This is electric, yes. - This is electric. - This one, we have built ourself because there's no one in the market that can provide you with it. - So with all of these
devices that are plugged into the grid, what happens
if there's a power outage? - Long lunch break. - Long lunch break. - We just learned that all the public parks
in Oslo are serviced by electric trucks to pick up trash, and that's what this is. Is this big truck electric? - This is electric. You want to film while he's tipping? - Yeah, that'd be great. And this is a battery-powered one. - Battery-powered wheeled excavator. This one's operating totally alone. Yeah, we charge during lunch time, and we can also detach the
batteries and replace them. - What you're about to see is- - So I'm switched. - That was it? That
was the battery switch? - Yes. This is empty, and
now I switched to this. It's full. - Okay. - Yeah, it's not complicated. So what is this guy doing? - Oh, he is going to
charge during lunch break. - Fully charged in 60 minutes
with the fast charger, but the excavator only needs
30 to 40 minutes of charging at lunch to get through
the remainder of the day. If it's being used for light work only, the excavator doesn't even
need to be charged at lunch. - That's it? - That's it. - So this excavator is battery-powered. This charger is a standard
charger that can charge a car. Kai told us that you could pull this into a gas station in Norway and plug it into a normal
charger, and you could charge it. Norway now exports electric
construction equipment to other countries-and Oslo
is ahead of its 2025 goal to make all city construction
sites emissions free. While the city of Oslo
is making great progress towards its emissions goals,
the country, well, not so much. - My name is Sigrun Aasland. I am the director of ZERO, zero emission resource
organization in Norway. What we do is promote solutions to the climate crisis, really. Norway has a history
in the climate policies of setting many goals over many years, and not achieving them. I think in Oslo, what's
made it possible is that Oslo has this climate budget where they actually commit
politicians to cutting emissions. - Believed to be the first of its kind, the climate budget
integrates decision-making about emissions alongside
financial budgeting, elevating the practical importance of addressing climate change. - Oslo implemented its
climate budget in 2016, and it's not a very complex
and complicated instrument. We need to count CO2 as we count money, so there is a budget
that you cannot exceed. It makes politicians accountable
to actually keep to it. - We called another car via Uber and we're gonna see if it's electric. Looks like it is a Prius, and
it is Prius Hybrid, so half. Road transportation
accounts for nearly 50% of Oslo emissions with the
single biggest contributor being, you guessed it, scooters. - I almost hit that girl.
I almost hit that girl. - No, no, not scooters! Cars. Cars. So we decided to rent an
electric car to explore- I'll let Dusty tell you. So Dusty, what are we doing today? - Oh, yeah. Um, I'm not
really sure actually. I think we're just getting in this car and going
for a joy ride, right? - I mean, yeah, neither
of us have driven a Tesla before, so Freethink credit card. - Oh my God. How does this work? - Get in the car. Hi, crew. - Hello.
- Hello. - I don't know if it's on. I don't know where the keys
are, and I haven't owned a car since I was 16, so this
will be interesting. - Sounds scary. - What could possibly go wrong? - I will say, Norwegians
are horrible drivers. There's a lot of traffic accidents, so. - Okay. - Just hit the gas pedal. - By 2025, all new cars sold in Norway must be zero emission. The country's already known for having the most electric
vehicles in the world, but that didn't happen by chance. Government policy going back
to the 1990s, well ahead of the rest of the world,
has incentivized the purchase and use of EVs through lower taxes, free parking and charging,
emission-free car zones, and ring tolls that penalized drivers of petrol cars, or gas cars for my fellow American cowboys out there. - We're at a busy intersection in Norway, the electric vehicle capital of the world, and we're gonna see how many
electric cars we can call out as they pass. I'm going by the rule thumb that if it doesn't have a
tailpipe, it's electric. Nope, gas. That was gas. This is gas. I'm gonna say gas, gas, gas. You think that Jeep is gas? This intersection is undermining
our whole story here. We got a Tesla. That looks electric. If it's futuristic, I'm
gonna say it's electric. That's electric. There's still a decent amount of gas cars but, you know, I don't know. Anywhere else in the world, can you stand on a corner and
see this many electric cars? I think that's probably the point, right? They still have the most, even
if not every car is electric. This is the best-selling
Norwegian vehicle of all time, the only electric vehicle
currently manufactured in Norway. This is the Paxster. I mean, it's basically a golf cart, right? - I'm not an expert on golf carts. - Well, me neither.
This is Catherine Lund. She works at the company
that makes this kind of golf cart, the Paxster. - We developed the Paxster
together with Norwegian Post. So they needed a vehicle
that was green, of course, ergonomic, efficient,
in their daily delivery. - Norwegian Postens enter
and exit their vehicle over 700 times a day
when delivering the mail. That's why the Paxster doesn't have doors, even though Oslo winters are pretty cold. Over 3,500 Paxsters are
in use across Europe, and not just to deliver all
that wonderful junk mail. - Food delivery companies,
bakeries, public sectors, e-scooter companies like
Bolt, it's fun to drive. - The Paxster right here, it's a vehicle that we use
on our daily operations to help change the
batteries on the scooters and the bicycles. - Using two Paxsters and
a couple electric vans, Bolt replaces the batteries
on their entire fleet of vehicles across Oslo every two days. - It's a much more efficient vehicle. It's more versatile as
to where you can park, and I don't know if this
should be on camera or not, but you can also cut the lines
on the bike lanes and so on. Very simple to slide them
in and slide them out and then replace them on our vehicles. - The Paxster can carry a half day's load of batteries, which are then
swapped out at lunchtime. The Paxster's battery lasts
for an eight-hour shift before being fully charged in
six to eight hours overnight via existing charging infrastructure. - This has a much smaller battery, but still gives us more than
a hundred kilometers range. - Awesome. Well, could
I maybe give it a drive? - Oh, of course. Definitely. - Okay, I'm gonna get seatbelted in. Do you seatbelt yourself
in when you drive? - Of course I do. - Of course you do. But do you really? - Yeah.
- Yeah. But do you really? - Um, yeah.
- Yeah. - Don't be scared of using
the whole accelerator. It's kinda fast. - Don't be scared of using
the whole accelerator- okay, here we go. As a last mile delivery or
service vehicle in urban spaces, the Paxster seems like a decent solution. Maybe it's nothing more than a golf cart, but it got me thinking: Maybe reducing emissions through electrification isn't
just about remaking the buses, cars, trams, and ferries we already have. Maybe it also means we need to invent new, in-between options,
customized to different needs. And if they're fun to drive,
that doesn't hurt either. We're here in Oslo exploring
electric transportation. I'm gonna get dizzy if I keep doing that. Yeah, okay we're good. Oh s***, hold on. So, I've been trying to
find an electric scooter, and the three that are within
walking distance are all dead. All the batteries are dead. - Yep.
- There's one! - That one's not dead. Almost all of Oslo's public mass transit, from trains to trams to
buses, is already electric. And by the end of 2023, an additional 450 electric buses
will replace the remaining, diesel-fueled ones currently on the roads. This will make Oslo the first
capital city in the world with an all-electric
public transport system. Designed in Norway and built in Turkey, these are the first
all-electric passenger ferries in the world-and they're whisper quiet. So that's the water making noise, but the engine's not very loud. Those engines are being
powered by 1,017 kilowatt hours of batteries on board- and this is the battery
that powers the ferry, the operator, the ferry operator. A six-minute, 2,000-kilowatt supercharge
gives the ship all it needs for a 60-minute round trip. A ferry could operate
for three hours straight without recharging, and has
backup generators just in case. Batteries on board mean the
risk of fire, but what's wild is that a battery fire can't
actually be extinguished by the crew. All they can do is cool the batteries with a water mist system, and contain the fire long
enough to evacuate passengers. It takes the fire department and their special equipment
to put out the blaze. - On a national level, Norway is a country with many small fjords and many ferries all across
the country that have now, since 2014, been very rapidly electrified- and that has happened much faster than anyone thought was
possible just a few years ago. - I'm determined to take as many modes of electric transportation
as possible while in Norway, so next up is the tram. How do the people of Oslo feel
about this electrification? Well, Oslovians, Osloites? Hm- One inhabitant of Oslo told us that people don't generally notice as long as the train or tram they
need each day shows up when they need it. This sign is essentially
saying, "Give your car a rest, and choose to be green
and ride public transit." Our experience with public transport was that it was clean, frequent,
busy but not overcrowded, and one app for purchasing
fares made it simple and easy to use. And maybe when it comes to cutting emissions in
the transportation sector, these quality of life issues
are actually quite vital because it makes sense to me that someone is more likely
to leave their car parked at home and to take the bus,
not because it's electric, but because it's safe,
affordable, and reliable. - Dude, we rode a tram
for like, what, 10 minutes and we're like... - In the mountains now- and the city just disappeared. We climbed up this hill
and then we're like, on the foggy hillside now. Crazy. We've arrived at the contradiction at the heart of this story. Even though Norway is
powered almost entirely by clean, abundant
hydropower, the country sells over two million barrels of oil a day for the rest of the world
to burn into the atmosphere. Profits from that oil
enables their aggressive, climate response. - While Norwegian electricity
is very clean, oil and gas is still a large source of emissions on a national budget because of the production
phase of the oil. - Yeah, tell me a little bit about that: As I understand it, oil and gas is the biggest
industry in Norway? - It's the biggest industry. It's also a large revenue for government's finances, of course. - Thanks to oil profits, Norway owns about 1% of
all listed global stocks. That's over $200,000 for each one of the five million Norwegian citizens. Instead of ramping down oil production in the immediate future, Norway is trying to make their oil extraction business run on clean wind power. - A lot of people have their
jobs related to the oil sector, a lot of qualified
personnel, a lot of capital, a lot of expertise in workforces that many people argue we could now use, building new green industries. - Norway exports oil, but uses clean power domestically. Is that hypocritical, or is
it a clever use of the power of oil profits in service
of a sustainable transition? - The main concern in the
environmental movement, of course now, is that we
take all those resources and those people and that capital, and we make sure that we use that in building green industries,
on the back of oil and gas. - 'The fight against
climate change requires new, innovative approaches. We aim at least to triple our funding for climate adaptation and resilience.' - As we've seen, there are a number of reasons electrification makes sense for Oslo as their path
to a cleaner future. And that path might not make sense for other cities with their
own unique circumstances, but Oslo can be seen as a
case study, a role model even for how a city can leverage
its built-in advantages and get truly aggressive about
addressing climate change- even when its own country
isn't moving as deliberately. But recently, Norway
actually followed the city of Oslo's lead in adopting its
own national climate budget. Cities can lead countries, and cities can be
inspirations to each other. What innovations are just
waiting to be unleashed in cities across Europe,
Asia, Africa, and the Americas that efforts like Oslo's can inspire? The electrification of Oslo
could maybe be the kindling that lights the fire of urban
climate action worldwide. - I don't know if Dusty's
gonna come back to work. - The turning radius is pretty impressive. - aOur sound guy can't get out of the way fast enough.
