The green petrostate How Norway is both climate hero and carbon villain

The average Norwegian is more likely than anyone else to drive to work in an electric car and warm their home with a heat pump.

- Ajit Niranjan

When they turn on the kettle in the morning or charge their phone at night, Norwegians plug into an electricity grid that runs almost entirely on renewables. Their politicians write checks to save trees in tropical forests and politely pressure other countries to protect the environment, too.

But on one metric, Norway's leafy green image darkens to an oily black. The rich Nordic nation digs up more petroleum per person than Russia, Iran, North America and Saudi Arabia.

"Norway claims to be a climate leader, but in reality it is a climate hypocrite," said Frode Pleym, the head of the Norwegian branch of campaign group Greenpeace.

"If Norway were an advertising agency, they would indeed be deemed to be very successful." Famed for its fabulous fjords and fairytale forests, Europe's northernmost country is the closest thing the world has to what could be called a green petrostate. Its 5.5 million inhabitants are adopting clean technologies faster than anyone else - while its political and industry leaders drill furiously for fossil fuels to sell to Europe.

It is a paradox that has led some to paint Norway as a climate hero and others to decry it as a carbon villain.

But whether the country deserves either title depends on a deeper issue that has divided people fighting to stop the planet from heating: how much does the supply of fossil fuels matter in a world where people keep demanding more of them? Norway is the wealthiest country in the world that is not classed as a tax haven. For decades, its politicians have spun a rags-toriches tale that puts the discovery of vast petroleum reserves at the centre of its success.

"In Norway, the story goes, we were a really poor country, then we found oil, and now we are rich," said Anne Karin Sæther, a project manager at the Norwegian Climate Foundation. "But Norway was among the 10 richest countries in the world before we found oil - and that is suppressed in the Norwegian narrative."