By Whitney Bauck for Reasons to be Cheerful and Nexus Media News.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

When Trondheim-based Magnus Korpås bought his first electric car in 2019, he settled on a Tesla-the model of car that offered the most charging stations available to him at the time. However, in just a few years, Norway built out its charging infrastructure so quickly that no matter what type of electric vehicle (EV) you choose, there's virtually always a charging point nearby.

"In Norway, we're quite used to electric vehicles. This is the common car now," says the professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "You diverge from the standard if you buy something else, really."

For the past three decades, Norway has doggedly endeavored to electrify its vehicle fleet, using a mix of infrastructure investments, subsidies and regulations to nudge people into electric cars. The results have been remarkable: 20% of cars on the road are EVs, and Norway was the first country in the world to see EV car sales begin to outpace fossil fuel car sales. Today, 80% of new cars sold in Norway are electric.

By comparison, the U.S. is woefully lagging. It is estimated that less than 1% of cars on U.S. roads are electric, and while EV sales are rapidly growing stateside, they still account for just under 5% of new cars sold in the country. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is meant to help speed the transition from fossil fuel cars to EVs as part of a bid to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions, about 27% of which are attributable to transportation.

While the IRA is designed to promote EV uptake through purchase subsidies, it simultaneously aims to vastly expand the U.S.'s EV charging network. Range anxiety, concern that a car will run out of charge while out on the road, is a significant factor keeping Americans from buying EVs. While many climate advocates argue that reducing transportation emissions requires strengthening public transit options and making cities more bikeable and walkable, promoting EV adoption is the fix most prominent in the IRA.

"There's strong consensus that vehicle electrification is a big part of the [climate] solution. But you can't do that without having the charging infrastructure," says Ben Shapiro, the manager of the Carbon-Free Transportation team at the clean energy think tank Rocky Mountain Institute. "From a climate perspective, it's imperative."

According to Shapiro, the U.S. needs "orders of magnitude more charging infrastructure than we have today" to reach its goal of making half of all vehicle sales zero-emissions by 2030. Norway-which has more EVs per capita, and more chargers per EV, than any other place in the world-offers a roadmap for how to get there.

The great buildout

Up to this point, EV charging infrastructure in the U.S. has been driven largely by private investment. Tesla has installed more than 163,000 chargers across the country, but its chargers only work on Teslas for now (though that's scheduled to change soon). In January, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would install 2,500 high-powered chargers that will work with any car by 2027, following Volkswagen's 2021 announcement that it planned to have 10,000 fast chargers in North America by 2025.

In Norway, too, Tesla was the first major commercial player to begin building out public charging stations in an effort to make its product more appealing. As EV adoption continued to increase in the 2000s and 2010s, the Norwegian government stepped in to ensure charging points were easy to use and equitably distributed. It invested 7 million euros to create 1,900 charging points by 2011.

Parallel measures to increase charging accessibility started to ramp up in the U.S. with the passage of recent policy like the IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIL). The latter invests $7.5 billion in EV charging with the goal of building out a network of 500,000 chargers across the nation by 2030, while the former restores expired tax credits for installing EV chargers in low-income communities and rural areas. The Biden administration finalized new standards that will make U.S. charging infrastructure available to everyone, regardless of what brand of car they drive. (Tesla's formerly exclusive Supercharger network will soon be open to all brands of EVs).

Norway offers additional lessons for prioritizing equity. Since more than 82% of EV users in Norway charge their vehicles at home, housing associations can apply for grants that subsidize up to 50 percent of the cost of buying and installing communal chargers. The Norwegian government also created "a law that parking garages have to establish the basic infrastructure, like having the electricity available," says assistant general secretary of the Norwegian EV Association Petter Haugneland.

Improving grid capacity

Analysis from S&P Global estimates that the U.S. needs to quadruple the number of EV chargers between 2022 and 2025 to keep pace with the EVs that will be on the road. If Norway's experience is any indicator, encouraging EV adoption itself might be the best tool the U.S. has to increase charger proliferation.

According to Korpås, Norway's path to charging point saturation started by stimulating more demand for EVs-just as the U.S. has done with EV purchase tax credits embedded in the IRA. But while the U.S. only incentivizes EV purchases, Norway also disincentivizes purchases of non-electric cars. Its "polluter pays" principle means that fossil fuel cars are taxed higher than EVs. The purchase tax on fossil fuel-burning cars is calculated by a combination of weight and emissions, which means bigger, more polluting cars are more expensive.

Because Norway is a cold country that had already built out extensive grid capacity to handle the population's heating needs-most of which are met with electricity-the Norwegian grid was decently equipped to handle the energy demand from EVs, Korpås says. In other words, the grid infrastructure was already in place even if public chargers were not.

Much like Norway, about 80% of EV charging in the U.S. happens at home. But the U.S.'s grid doesn't have as much relative capacity as Norway's, in part because the U.S. tends to rely more on natural gas for heating. Expanding EV charging infrastructure in the U.S. will rely more on building out the electrical grid's overall capacity than on building more public charging ports.

Another contributing factor to Norway's success adopting EVs is its deep pockets - which is, in no small part, due to its status as a major oil exporter. The country of 5 million people collected almost $90 billion in tax revenue from the oil and gas industry last year, according to Norwegian officials, and its per capita gross domestic product is $20,000 more than the United States', per World Bank data. And while the IRA has freed up funding for climate initiatives stateside, many decarbonization projects have and will continue to run into dead ends until the U.S. begins to more proactively plan its grid buildout.

"There's a pretty significant investment that will need to take place to support all of this new electrical demand," says RMI's Shapiro. "That's not only an electric utility issue, that's also a regulatory issue. We have a lot of work to do from an electric sector public policy perspective to enable the utilities to move more quickly on this to get ahead of the growing demand for charging." Part of what that means, he says, is streamlining the permitting process so utilities can quickly invest in infrastructure that can anticipate future electricity needs.

According to Haugneland, the Norwegian EV Association's members use public fast chargers about twice a month, and a host of third-party charging companies are stepping in to take advantage of the growing market. Companies like Recharge and Eviny are establishing fast chargers, which can charge an EV battery to about 80% capacity in 30-45 minutes. These stations are everywhere from traditional gas stations to grocery stores to McDonalds', with a growing number of chargers outside the major cities for when people take longer trips.

'You can't copy everything'

These days, one of the biggest frustrations Norwegian EV drivers face, according to Haugneland and Korpås, is that there's no easy, centralized way to find or pay for charging across all the different platforms. If the U.S. can get ahead of that problem by ensuring a more standardized approach to locating and paying for public charging, as the Biden administration has committed to, it will benefit drivers, Haugneland says. So will a streamlined permitting policy that allows electric utilities to build out grid infrastructure more quickly so they can meet increased electricity demand from EVs, Shapiro says.

"The European and U.S. market may be five years behind, but hopefully you will catch up very soon," says Haugneland. "Of course you can't copy everything, but I think there's a lot of learning to be done from the Norwegian market."


Whitney Bauck wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.


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New Mexico farmers finding it more difficult to grow historic crops are taking up conservation techniques to meet the challenge.

Drought, water scarcity, and extreme weather events combine to require growers to adopt new methods and modern tools.

John Idowu, extension agronomist specialist at New Mexico State University, shows farmers how to improve soil health and help control wind erosion. For long term success, he said they need to focus on sustainable, regenerative practices.

"How can I optimize my system and make it more resilient to climate change, to weather changes?" Idowu explained. "Once we have all those things worked out, farmers will tend to stay in business for longer."

Earlier this year, a NOAA satellite captured an image of winds lifting vast amounts of dust and dirt from New Mexico's dry farmlands. Some forecasters compared it to images last seen in the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Plowing agricultural fields annually was a common practice until the Dust Bowl period but in recent decades no-till or low-till farming operations have gained traction.

Bonnie Hopkins Byers, program director for the San Juan County Extension Service, encouraged New Mexico farmers to get a soil analysis and consider adopting the less aggressive approach. She said it could mean they do not need to till every year.

"One of the biggest problems is that people do something because that's the way they've always done it, or because it's the way their parents have done it, or their grandparents," Hopkins Byers acknowledged. "My philosophy has always been if you're going to till something over, till something in."

Intense dust storms known as "haboobs" were originally thought to be confined to Africa's Sudan but are becoming more common in other arid regions such as the Southwest.

Idowu stressed it makes the adoption of regenerative practices more urgent, as topsoil on New Mexico farmland disappears due to drought, land use changes and wind, which he noted has been particularly strong this year.

"The wind has been a major force, especially in the spring, so many days where you couldn't do anything outside because of the wind," Idowu observed. "You have a lot of dust and that means a lot of erosion and that is exactly what you don't like when it comes to crop production."

The New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group formed to help farmers improve their land and livelihoods.


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By Carolyn Beans for Lancaster Farming.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Lancaster Farming-MIT Climate Change Engagement Program-Public News Service Collaboration

At Mountain View Holsteins in Bethel, Pennsylvania, owner Jeremy Martin is always working to make his dairy more efficient.

Currently, he has his sights set on a manure solid-liquid separator. He'd like to use the solid portion of his manure as bedding for his 140 cows and the liquid as fertilizer.

But the project is pricey - he expects the equipment alone will run around $100,000. So Martin hopes to defray the cost through grant funding for dairy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Removing much of the solids from manure reduces the feed for the methane-producing microbes that thrive in the anaerobic conditions of liquid manure.

The approach is just one of many dairy practices now considered "climate-smart" because they could cut production of climate-warming gases.

For Martin, a manure separator wouldn't be possible without a grant.

"Once it's in place and going, I think some of these practices will pay for themselves, but the upfront cost is more than I can justify," he says. "If there's money out there to pay that upfront cost to get started, it makes sense to me to do it."

Across Pennsylvania, dairy farmers are learning more about climate-smart practices and funding opportunities, and weighing whether these changes are really sustainable for their businesses as well as the environment.

The Latest Buzzword

USDA has defined climate-smart agriculture as an approach that reduces or removes greenhouse gas emissions, builds resilience to the changing climate, and sustainably increases incomes and agricultural productivity.

"Before climate-smart was a thing, we called it conservation. We called it stewardship," says Jackie Klippenstein, a senior vice president at Dairy Farmers of America.

Indeed, long before the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations coined the term "climate-smart agriculture" in 2010, Pennsylvania dairy farmers had adopted many of the practices that now fall under the label.

For dairy, climate-smart practices largely include strategies that reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, manure or fields. Tried and true conservation practices like cover cropping and reduced tillage count.

So do newer practices like using the feed additive Bovaer to reduce methane production in a cow's rumen, or precision nitrogen management to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fields.

Paying for Climate-Smart

"Margins are very tight on the dairy farm," says Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence, a public-private partnership to strengthen Pennsylvania's dairy industry. "Some of these (climate-smart practices) are good for the climate, but they don't make good economic sense until they're subsidized."

In 2022, the center joined a Penn State-run program called "Climate-smart Agriculture that is profitable, Regenerative, Actionable and Trustworthy" to provide dairy farmers with funds for switching to climate-smart practices.

CARAT was launched with a $25 million USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant, but the future of the Pennsylvania project is in doubt. In April, USDA canceled the partnership program, suggesting that recipients reapply to a new USDA initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers.

Over 60 dairy farmers across Pennsylvania, including Martin, had already applied and been accepted into the first phase of CARAT. This initial phase was intended to help farmers identify the best climate-smart practices for their operations. In the second phase, farmers would have applied for funding to implement those practices. One farmer was already paid for his project before the USDA canceled the partnership program.

"There are fewer funding sources for climate-smart projects than in the last administration. However, private organizations and other entities are funding climate-smart projects," Sebright says. "Depending on what the practice is, (climate-smart) could also be conservation projects. It could be water quality projects."

Sebright suggests that dairy farmers also look for support through state-level funding, such as Pennsylvania's Resource Enhancement and Protection program, which offers tax credits for implementing practices that benefit farms and protect water quality.

Pennsylvania dairy farmers can also contact their county conservation districts to ask about funding opportunities for climate-smart projects, says Amy Welker, a project manager and grant writer for Pennsylvania-based Jones Harvesting, which operates Maystone Dairy in Newville and Molly Pitcher Milk in Shippensburg.

In the next year, Jones Harvesting plans to install a methane digester and solid-liquid separator at a site near Maystone Dairy. The digester is funded with an Agricultural Innovation Grant from the state and an Environmental Quality Incentives Program grant from USDA, along with private funds.

There's money out there for farmers who implement climate-smart practices, says Welker. But "you can't just look at one source."

Long-Term Payoffs

Ultimately, for climate-smart projects to make economic sense, they must continue paying for themselves long after the initial investment. One major goal of the USDA's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program was to develop markets where farmers adopting these practices could earn a premium.

Some dairy farmers might see that return in the carbon market. National checkoff organization Dairy Management Inc. and its partners have pledged to shrink the industry's net greenhouse gas production to zero by 2050. There are growing opportunities for companies working toward that goal in the dairy supply chain to pay farmers for their contributions.

Early last year, Texas dairy farmer Jasper DeVos became the first to earn credits through the livestock carbon insetting marketplace. DeVos earned carbon credits by reducing methane emissions with a feed protocol that included the feed additive Rumensin. Dairy Farmers of America then purchased those credits through Athian, a carbon marketplace for the livestock industry.

Increased Efficiency

Even without direct monetary payoff, many farmers who adopt climate-smart practices reap rewards in improved efficiency and productivity.

"When you look at climate-smart, you also have to look at what's farm smart," Sebright says. She suggests that farmers choose practices that benefit their farms, not just the climate.

A farmer might decide to put a cover and flare system on a manure pit, not only because it reduces methane emissions but also because it keeps rainwater out of the pit and reduces the number of times each year the pit must be emptied.

Andy Bollinger of Meadow Spring Farm in Lancaster County has been running a manure separator since 2009. The liquid fertilizes his fields, and a portion of the solids becomes bedding for his cows.

He estimates the system saves him at least $20,000 a year in bedding costs.

"We put a fresh coating of it onto the stalls that our cows lay in every day and scrape the old stuff out," says Bollinger, who is also the vice president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania. "It seems to work quite well, and it saves us from buying other bedding products."

No-till farming is also a cost saver because it reduces field passes with equipment, says James Thiele of Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot, which has been 100% no-till for at least six years. The practice saves him money on fuel and herbicides.

"You're saving your environment, and you're also saving green," he says.

But Thiele questions whether some other climate-smart practices like methane digesters would be practical for his farm, which has 75 to 80 cows.

"I don't know if it'd be worth it for somebody as small as I am," he says.

"I think over the next few years, we'll rapidly see (climate-smart) tools become more available, and we'll see more organizations like DFA talking to our small to mid-sized farmers to make sure they understand they've got a place in this, they can benefit from it, and the practices and tools are affordable to them as well," Klippenstein says.

Weighing Climate-Smart

Many dairy farmers wonder whether some of the practices championed as climate-smart will really support their businesses.

Donny Bartch of Merrimart Farms in Loysville has adopted environmental practices from cover cropping to a manure management plan.

"I want to protect the environment. I want to keep my nutrients here on the farm and be sustainable for another five generations," Bartch says. "But we have to make sure that we're making the right decisions to keep the business going. And to do some of these (climate-smart) practices, the only way they pencil out is to have those subsidies."

There is also frustration with a system that rewards climate-smart improvements made today without acknowledging the contributions of farmers who were climate-smart before anyone put a name on it.

"You come around and want to start rewarding people for doing these things. You really need to start with the ones that have been doing it for a long time, but that's really not what happens," says Jim Harbach of Schrack Farms in Loganton, whose farm has been no-till for 50 years.

Climate-smart grant money and carbon credits are typically awarded for the implementation of new practices.

"It's just the unfortunate way that all of the policies and regulations were written," Sebright says. "What I would say is, if you do a climate-smart plan, maybe there are practices or things you can do to enhance or support or take what you're doing a step further."

Scientific Measurements on Real Farms

Some dairy farmers also want to know more about how climate-smart practices will affect their farms before jumping in.

Steve Paxton remembers participating in a government program to improve timber over 50 years ago on his family dairy, Irishtown Acres in Grove City. His family members were paid to climb up into their white pines and saw off many of the bottom branches.

The goal was to create a cleaner log. Instead, more sunlight shown through, which caused grape vines to climb up and topple the trees.

"The bottom line is, there was research done, it looked good, but it hadn't had enough time to follow through and see just really what the end results would be," Paxton says.

When Paxton sees estimates of how some practices might reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, he wonders how much of that research has been tested on actual dairies.

"I think some of it now is just kind of a textbook estimate of what's happening," he says.

More meaningful data is needed to show how climate-smart practices reduce greenhouse gases on individual dairies, Sebright says.

As part of the CARAT program, Penn State researchers planned to place greenhouse gas sensors on a dozen dairies and test how much greenhouse gas production falls as farmers experiment with different practices. The researchers intended to then use that data to build models that predict how those practices may affect emissions on other farms. They will still measure emissions this spring on one farm that is experimenting with a new approach for spreading manure in fields of feed crops.

"The real goal of (CARAT) is to have research that says, if you put a cover and flare (manure storage system) on a 500-cow dairy, this is how greenhouse gas emissions will change," Sebright says. "Or if you use Bovaer on a 90-cow herd, here's how this will affect greenhouse gas emissions."

Martin of Mountain View Holsteins has his own personal beliefs about where a dairy farmer's responsibilities to the planet begin and end. But from a business perspective, he feels compelled to adopt climate-smart practices because he expects the industry will eventually require them.

"Climate concerns are coming whether I'd like it or not," he says. "So my thought is, I might as well get started on it while there's funding to do it."


Carolyn Beans wrote this article for Lancaster Farming.


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Oregon's new state budget cuts funding for programs intended to protect residents from extreme weather and make renewable energy more accessible.

Climate justice advocates said it is a major setback after years of progressive climate policies.

Ben Brint, senior climate program director for the Oregon Environmental Council, is disappointed to lose funding for the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, which supports a variety of projects tailored to communities, including microgrids and solar storage.

"We felt legislators didn't fund climate resilience programs while fires are raging, people's houses are burning down and the state has already experienced record heat waves in June," Brint pointed out. "Legislators don't see we are in an actual climate emergency and chose inaction."

Brint said the grant program aimed to help low-income, rural and communities of color, those most impacted by climate disasters. Lawmakers attributed the cuts to budget shortfalls and uncertainty over federal funding.

Joel Iboa, executive director of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, said the Community Resilience Hub program, which creates networks as well as physical places to protect people from extreme cold, heat and smoke also lost funding this session. He argued the hubs are effective because communities design them to meet their unique needs.

"Whether it be a place to plug in your phone or a place to go get diapers or get an air conditioner or whatever your community may need," Iboa outlined. "Depending on what's going on."

A heat pump program for rental housing, aimed at making energy-efficient heating and cooling more affordable, was also cut this session.

Brint added he realizes legislators have to make tough decisions about how to fund health care and housing but emphasized climate change is connected to those issues.

"When we're talking about heat pumps or the C-REP program, we're talking about people's health and livelihoods and saving lives in the face of climate fueled disaster," Brint stressed.

Brint added since climate change is not going away, the movement to push for climate resilience will not either.


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