Fun fact, since you mentioned Norway -- in the early 1900s, Norwegian industry also used the Birkeland-Eyde process to produce nitric acid for fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen.
The process is not energy-competitive with other processes, but since the plants in question had very cheap hydropower energy that couldn't be exported for use elsewhere, this was not a dealbreaker.
I'm thinking that energy-intensive industry in early hydropower-friendly regions could get away with using simple but inefficient processes, since the energy couldn't be used for anything better anyway. Sort of like creating a minimum viable product of an industrial process, before optimizing and getting great efficiency increases.
The process is not energy-competitive with other processes, but since the plants in question had very cheap hydropower energy that couldn't be exported for use elsewhere, this was not a dealbreaker.
I'm thinking that energy-intensive industry in early hydropower-friendly regions could get away with using simple but inefficient processes, since the energy couldn't be used for anything better anyway. Sort of like creating a minimum viable product of an industrial process, before optimizing and getting great efficiency increases.