Norway plans to buy electric planes, mimicking green car success

Norway said Thursday it wants to buy electric passenger planes in the coming years to help slow climate change, building on its success with big tax breaks that have made it the world leader in electric car sales. State firm Avinor, which runs 45 airports in Norway, said the commitment to battery-powered aircraft could encourage development of electric and hybrid technologies by companies such as Airbus or Boeing. “In my mind, there’s no doubt that by 2040 Norway will be operating totally electric” on short-haul flights, said Dag Falk-Pedersen, head of Avinor. Among airlines, “Airbus told us they need a customer and they need a market - and we can offer them both,” he said. “Of course they need a bigger market and more customers. But someone has to start.” Norway, a mountainous country of 5 million people with towns beside remote fjords, would be ideal for electric planes which can accelerate faster than conventional planes and so need shorter runways, he said. But electric planes so far have big problems of weight, with bulky batteries, and limited ranges. The first electric planes flew across the English Channel in July 2015, including an Airbus E-Fan. “It could be that we are presenting a tender within a year or two to the market to commercialize electric aircraft,” Falk-Pedersen said, adding that such a tender might be for 5 to 15 planes of between 12 and 50 seats.<br/>