Overall assessment

Updated December 2022

Norway is not an EU Member State so they do not have the same transposition timeline as the other countries. Norway is part of the European Economic Area (EEA) so Directives and EU policy depend on individual procedures and negotiations between the EU and the EEA/EFTA for each policy. It can take several years from when the EU decision is made until it is included in the EEA agreement. For instance, the Third Energy Package was not included in the EEA agreement until 2017 and adopted by the Norwegian Parliament in April 2018. The RED II (Directive (EU) 2018/2001) is still under review by the EEA/EFTA. The government information state that it is still under review and no timeline is given.

There is a change coming concerning community energy, but not in relation to EU policy. The revised national budget has announced that a new regulation is in the making to ensure that housing cooperatives can produce and share electricity (PV) within the same building. There are some cumbersome regulations at the moment (joint metering is not allowed) that have prevented this from taking place and being economically sustainable. For Norway this will be a very important step towards community energy. It is not as a consequence of EU policy, but it comes as a result of years of lobbying from actors involved in PV, automatization and smart systems, property developers and not least housing cooperatives. It is also related to the emerging need for more flexibility due to electrification of personal transport in the cities. It is expected to go through already in early 2022.