Infrastructure development for electrical mobility: a Nordic perspective on national and cross-national challenges

The formative EU transport policy focuses on region-wide initiatives to promote more sustainable transportation, including electrical mobility. The vow to integrate or coordinate the ongoing development of electrical mobility into a Europe-wide recharging-infrastructure confronts a number of challenges.

As a region, Europe consists of a range of national contexts that differ in most respects that are relevant to realizing this shared aim. In preparation for a transition to standardized regional infrastructure, it is useful to study the implications of what it would mean at the more disaggregated level.

This paper studies the national cases of Norway and Denmark within the context of the seemingly homogenous Nordic region. The paper focuses on the different approaches taken at the national level to build battery electric vehicle (BEV) recharging infrastructure. Norway and Denmark provide apt, contrasting focal points.

Despite its position as a large fossil-fuel exporter and its mountainous topography, Norway exhibits high – and rapidly growing – levels of penetration of BEVs. Denmark is developing a connected nation-wide infrastructure. In both countries the integration of the existing infrastructures of electricity systems and road transport/parking systems is part of the challenge.

The paper takes stock of the factors that have contributed to these developments and discusses the implications of further developments in terms of European ambitions and in terms of the role-out of hydrogen-refuelling infrastructure. Based on domestic endowments, demography, policy contexts, each has pursued different approaches to BEV recharging infrastructure and each has experienced different levels of BEV penetration.

We look at a set of factors to explain these differences: the share of electricity from renewable resources, the types of renewable sources, the composition of fleets, public support for infrastructure, public sector incentives for BEV use, etc. This analysis can help inform a discussion of the transition from national to European transportation infrastructure.

Implications for the building out of infrastructure for new energy carriers (hydrogen for use in fuel cell vehicles) will also be drawn.