Norway goes big on wind power production

Norway is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful countries in Europe and one of the most innovative and HSEQ-360 were impressed with news, this week, of its ambitions with wind. It is planning to fit bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines in the southern North Sea. These will generate 1.5 GW of power for up to 460,000 households. 

Impressive indeed. 

Norway though has other quirks and interesting facts that are little known – until now as we share 5 of the most interesting in our new blog post. If you like this one, make sure you read our others too on LinkedIn and our website (there is one on Taiwan too, which may interest you).

  1. Longest road tunnel

The longest road tunnel in the world is in Norway. 15 miles in fact. What’s clever too is that the lighting has been created to reduce strain and improve driver concentration, along with design elements to stop drivers becoming comatose with boredom.

2. World’s most remote territory

Bouvet Island is the world’s most remote territory. It is uninhabited, only having an unmanned weather station, but what struck us was its location. It is located approximately 1,700km north of the coastline of Antarctica and 2,600km away from the South African coast. The closest inhabited land is the British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha, more than 2,000km away. Tristan is also an extremely remote place, with no airport.

3. It shares a land border with Russia. 

We know, we know. This may surprise you. It surprised us too. It’s not a tiny border either – it runs for 120 miles, with one crossing point. Storskog, if you demand precision. Don’t try to cross it though, without papers as rules are strictly enforced there, we read. 

4. It has tri-lingual towns. 

Some places along the Russian border speak Norwegian, Russian and English. Street signs are bilingual, as they are in Wales, closer to home, for example. Norway also has two variants of written Norwegian.

Kirkenes is also further east than Cairo when you look on a map – another interesting fact we think!

5. Norway is not called Norway.

Norway is the name of the country in the English language. In Norwegian, the country is called Norge. In the lesser-used nynorsk variety of Norwegian, the spelling is Noreg. Very similar to the county capital of our base – Norwich.

Finally, we said 5 but this fact left us reeling. 

Did you know that oil and gas powers businesses in Norway but homes are powered by green energy. In fact, 98% of all residential buildings draw power from hydroelectric sources. It is one of the highest net generators of green energy globally too.

Coupled with its new bottom-fixed wind turbines, Norway must be well on its way to net zero by 2030.

Have you been to Norway? 

Can you add other interesting facts about Norway, if you have been?