Central Planning Disaster in Norway

Whenever a state becomes rich, it inevitably ends up squandering its wealth on utopian projects that hurt the people of the nation. Portugal is an example of this. The state became immensely rich from its empire. The riches were used on lavish building projects. Everywhere in Portugal, we find churches, monasteries and palaces built during the 17th and 18th century.

The upkeep of these projects became in turn a burden on the locals. Resources were diverted from the private sector to the public sector. By the end of the 20th century, Portugal was one of the poorest countries in Europe, entangled in endless wars in its colonies.

It took Portugal three hundred years to go from the richest country in Europe in the 17th century to the poorest country in Europe in the 20th century.

Norway, which was the richest country in Europe a few years back, is currently on a similar trajectory. However, they seem to be heading down at an accelerated pace compared to Portugal. Norwegian politicians are even more full of themselves than the Portuguese kings were back in their days.

Norwegian politicians are not only spending lavishly on public buildings, they are erecting huge wind turbines everywhere, and they are enacting laws that incentivize a switch away from oil and gas. Everything from cars to home heating is now electrical. However, this is creating some serious hardships.

Not only are people burdened with more taxes for the upkeep of wind turbines, they are forced to pay extra for petrol. Many have switched to electric cars. But that doesn't come for free either. Electric cars don't last as long as conventional cars, they aren't very reliable in cold weather, and Norway doesn't have the capacity to provide the electricity required by the new demand.

The central planners have simply assumed that their wind turbines would provide the extra electricity. They've been so confident of this that they have built cables to Germany for export of cheap electricity. But reality is catching up with fantasy. Hydroelectric dams that are normally overflowing with melt water at this time of year are already half empty.

Norway has no other electric capacity than what's provided by hydroelectric dams and wind turbines, so there's no spare capacity anywhere in the country. The only option is to import expensive and heavily taxed electricity from German coal fired power-plants.

The price of electricity in Norway used to be the lowest in Europe. Now, thanks to central planning, Norwegians have the most expensive electricity in Europe. The result of this is that people in Norway are being impoverished at a staggering rate. Come this winter, many will find it difficult to pay their electricity bills.

Unsustainable sustainability 

By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link