The top Norwegian envoy in Seoul called Tuesday for cooperation with Korea to build hydrogen-powered cars as the two countries are pushing to go green by slashing carbon emissions and switching to renewable energy sources.

Norwegian Ambassador Jan Grevstad said complementary expertise in the energy, maritime and oil and gas industries creates ample opportunity for South Korean and Norwegian businesses to contribute to a green transition, reducing fossil fuel consumption, and relying more on solar, wind and other forms of energy production.

“A great example of the Norwegian-Korean energy cooperation can be found in the transport sector,” Grevstad said in a session of the Korea-Norway Economic Cooperation Council at the Federation of Korean Industries, which speaks for Korea’s large businesses.

“Korean engine technology is paired with Norwegian hydrogen production and infrastructure technology to create hydrogen driven cars,” according to the text of Grevstad’s speech provided by the Norwegian Embassy. Grevstad did not elaborate beyond that.

Korea has been racing to develop hydrogen fuel cell cars as they do not produce greenhouse gases that scientists say are to blame for global warming.

A fuel cell car emits only water vapor as it converts stored hydrogen into electricity, which turns the vehicle’s motor.

Hyundai Motor, Korea’s largest automaker, has become the first carmaker in the world to mass produce a hydrogen-powered car.

Hyundai Motor said it has sold a total of 503 units of the Tuscon fuel cell vehicles, including 26 units in Norway.

Norway is set to ban the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars, beginning 2025 as part of its efforts to move toward a new and greener economy.

Korea is Norway’s second largest trading partner in Asia, and the largest international market for the Norwegian supplier industry. (Yonhap)

-Portrait of Erik Solheim, Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC)

Erik Solheim, a former Minister of Environment and International Development in Norway, began his tenure today as Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, with the concurrent position of UN Under-Secretary-General. Mr. Solheim assumes his new role as chief of the global authority on the environment after three years as head of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In taking up office, Solheim pledged to work with countries around the world to tackle some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, including ocean and air pollution, the destruction of ecosystems, climate change and the relationship between the environment and conflict and migration.

He also promised to focus on environment issues close to people, such as damage to human health from air pollution.

Solheim said, “There is an urgent need to fight climate change, halt ecosystem destruction, and reduce pollution for the benefit of all peoples everywhere. By protecting our planet, we protect ourselves and in the process can help bring every last person out of poverty. We all have a stake in a healthy planet.”

He noted other urgent areas to address include the private sector investment needed for sustainable development, greening the finance sector and creating jobs and markets with clean and green technologies.

“Financing the preservation and rejuvenation of our planet cannot be the purview of governments alone. Private sector finance is both vital for sustainable development, and an opportunity for business. As never before, markets are rewarding investments in clean and green jobs and technologies.”

Solheim also underlined that issues like climate change and sustainable development are issues that no one country or organization can solve themselves, and that the world must come together to tackle environmental challenges.

“With successes like the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, the world has achieved a lot in recent years when it comes to the environment. We can achieve a lot more. But the only way to do this is by working cooperatively. I look forward to working with member states and welcoming voices and efforts from all parts of society to tackle our common challenges.

“Our planet is vulnerable, but I’m optimistic we can resolve the environmental problems we face. There’s little we can’t achieve when we pull together with cooperation, collaboration and a can-do attitude.”

Solheim arrives after having served as Chair of the DAC of the OECD since 2013. Since that time, he has also served as UN Environment Programme’s Special Envoy for Environment, Conflict and Disaster. Known as the ‘green’ politician, he held the combined portfolio of Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development from 2007 to 2012, and served as Minister of International Development from 2005 to 2007.

Having spent most of his career fighting for the environment in national and global politics, including through non-governmental organizations and during his combined ministerial portfolio, Mr. Solheim has focused on the challenge of integrating environmental and developmental issues. During his ministerial tenure, Norway reached 1 per cent of its GDP for overseas development assistance and passed the unique Nature Diversity Act. He initiated the process leading to the global coalition to conserve and promote sustainable use of the world’s rainforests – the UN REDD – gaining invaluable diplomatic and organizational experience.

Holding an undergraduate degree in history and social studies from the University of Oslo, Mr. Solheim has received several awards for his work on climate and environment, including UN Environment Programme’s “Champion of the Earth” award, and contributed to a number of peace and reconciliation efforts, most notably as the chief negotiator of the peace process in Sri Lanka.

Born in 1955, he is married, with four children.

An extended biography of Erik Solheim can be found here.

For media interviews and press matters concerning the Executive Director, please contact:

UN Environment Programme Newsdesk

Nairobi, Kenya

Email: unepnewsdesk@unep.org

For other matters concerning the Executive Director, please contact:

Executive Office

United Nations Environment Programme

P.O. Box 47074 – Nairobi 00100 – Kenya

Phone: +254 (0)20 762 4148

Fax: +254-20-7624006/7624275

Email: executiveoffice@unep.org

In the summer of 2013, the seven year old Mingus Lund threw at Coca Cola bottle with a postcard inside into the ocean by Geitskjæret on Nøtterøy near the town of Tønnsberg in Norway. The photo showed the famous cliff Prekestolen in Norway. On the other side of the card, Mingus wrote – with the help of his cousin:

“Hi, I am a seven year old boy. If you find this bottle, I hope you will reply to me.” And then the address of the hotel, where his family were staying and where they stay on vacation every summer.

Almost three years later, Mingus has now received a reply – from a bar owner on Serendipity Beach in Sihanoukville in Cambodia.

“Hi, My name is Cho Chum and I am 37 years old,” he writes – possible with the help of a tourist.

“I found your bottle while I was fishing outside Koh Rong. You card has been hanging in my bar since I found it. But some days ago, two Swedes translated it for me and told me where Norway is. The bottle has traveled a really long way. Yours Cho Chum and the address: Serendipity Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia.”

It is not known how long the postcard had been hanging on the wall in the bar in Sihanoukville before the two helpful Swedes noticed the famous cliff on the postcard.

Mingus mother is the Norwegian TV producer Marte Stokstad.

“There are so many coincidences in this story that it becomes quite magic,” says Marte Stokstad to the Norwegian daily, VG, who found the news as a post on Marte Stokstad’s Facebook timeline and followed up on the story.

The big question is, how the Coca Cola bottle canme from Tønnsberg to Sihanoukville. Was it transported by the ocean streams? Or did it at one time enter a ballast water tank on a ship?

Marte Stokstad told VG that she is considering producing a documentary about the bottle letter. She sees also an environmental perspective in the story.

“I have sent the name of the finder of the bottle to several bars on Serendipity beach,” she says.

“The aim is to go there with my son. Imagine walking into the bar in a surprise visit …”the bottle family from Norway”. It is almost absurd and would be great fun. We simply have to do this,” she laughs when she told VG about her plan.

Oceanographer Lars Asplin from the Norwegian Oceanographic Institute thinks the likelihood that the bottle should have traveled by the streams of the oceans up along the Norwegian West coast, through the North East passage and the Bering Strait into the Pacific Ocean, down along the coast of Japan, then East with the Kuroshio stream across the Pacific Ocean to North America, only to travel back West with the North Equatorial stream to finally enter the Gulf of Siam … is almost negligent.

He suspects the bottle went to Cambodia by air.

“You should never say never; the ways of the oceans are mysterious. But personally I believe a joker in Norway or Sweden found the bottle with the letter, then traveled on vacation to South East Asia and threw it into the ocean there,” Lars Asplin says to VG.

“But it is a good story,” he adds.