They are blessed with oil, geothermal, and wind and, unlike the UK, didn’t piss the North Sea oil money up the wall on frivolous tax cuts.
It's why the Netherlands (cold, cloudy, wet climate) is Europe's primary bell-pepper, tomato, cucumber etc producer all year through. It's why it's the largest producer of mushrooms worldwide. Has massive cut-flower exports all year long.
Energy for greenhouses and mushroom farms is provided for basically free. Ironically, now that the gas is (economically) finished, the government is essentially buying Russian and Norwegian gas with tax money (not literally, but through subsidies).
So your Dutch tomatoes (aside from being tasteless) or the mushrooms on your pizza are for a large part this cheap because Dutch taxpayers paid for the energy to grow them.
[1]: https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energiforsyning/kraftpr...
Hydro is the first row in the table at [1], so it's 84% by capacity (second column) or 87% by typical annual production (third column).
[1] The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate: https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/kraftproduksjon/
This is a common misconception that probably stems from Norway's low population density. However, much of the country is very sparsely inhabited, and the urbanization levels are almost exactly the same as the UK's [1]. A large proportion of the population lives in multi-unit homes with limited street parking, at comparable densities to the UK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_sovereign_stat...
So why does it work for Norway but not in the UK? My options are:
1. Drive to the local high power charging station and pay more than a tank of petrol for half the range.
Oh that's it.
Edit: This can be read as me telling the other guy how he should sort things where he lives. That wasn't the intention - I'm describing the situation here in Norway.
Prices fluctuates but it's been roughly steady at around 6 NOK / kWh using a supercharger[3] and 21 NOK / L at the pumps.
So to drive 100km it would cost me about 108 NOK for my EV, or 147 NOK if I had the petrol car.
Now, this changes dramatically if you can charge at home. Even during winter with high prices you'll typically not pay more than 3 NOK / kWh and typically around 1 NOK / kWh, so a fraction of the price for petrol.
edit: I should note that coops and similar can get up to 30% in subsidies from the gov't to install chargers in the common parking areas[5], so not just single home owners that can enjoy charging at home.
[1]: https://www.auto-data.net/en/renault-megane-iv-phase-ii-2020...
[2]: https://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/renault/megane_4gen/...
[3]: https://elbil.no/dette-koster-hurtiglading/
[4]: https://no.globalpetrolprices.com/Norway/gasoline_prices/
[5]: https://www.klimaoslo.no/tilskudd/ladeinfrastruktur-til-bore...
Downtown the municipality has added a lot of curb-side chargers, however pricing isn't very favorable as you have to pay for parking in addition to charging. It was a good deal for a while, not so much anymore. In general parking downtown is hard to find and expensive so not very fun, including for those who live there.
1. Higher rate of VAT on fast chargers than at home charging
2. (Not) Allowing fast chargers to qualify for money ringfenced to encourage biofuels
3. Taxes intended to clean up energy that made sense when coal was used to generate most electricity which should now be rebalanced onto gas/petrol.
Also bear in mind that Russian warmongering escalated the gas price which increased the electricity price and only homes got the price cap protection.