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Inside the gigafactory producing the greenest batteries in the world

Northvolt says that its massive factory in Sweden will soon produce enough batteries each year to power a million electric cars, with a much smaller carbon footprint than those made in China

27 June 2023

By Michael Le Page

The Northvolt Ett factory in Sweden

Northvolt Ett

On a journey out of Skellefteå, an industrial town in the north of Sweden, I pass several large factories. But they are all dwarfed by my destination – Northvolt Ett, the first battery “gigafactory” to begin production in Europe.

“You need to see it to believe it,” says Anders Thor of Northvolt, the firm behind the factory. He isn’t wrong. As Thor points out, the Pentagon – the largest office building in the world and home to the US defence department – could fit into the site with plenty of room to spare.

Much of Northvolt Ett, which stretches way off to hills in the distance, is still a building site. Wearing safety boots, I trudge across the hot, dusty gravel to the side that has been finished – a series of enormous grey buildings where battery production is being slowly ramped up after beginning in 2021.

When it is finished in around 2026, Northvolt Ett will employ 4000 people and produce 60 gigawatt hours of lithium battery cells a year, enough for a million medium-sized electric cars. Everything here is on a vast scale. Eventually, a 1-kilometre corridor will run across the site to link buildings, says Northvolt’s Sanna Bäckström.

But scale isn’t the only claim to fame here. Northvolt says that, once fully operational, the batteries it produces will be the greenest in the world.

You have probably heard the myth that electric cars don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions because so much carbon dioxide is emitted to produce them. This isn’t true – electric cars emit less than fossil-fuel ones, even where electricity comes mostly from fossil fuels. But manufacturing electric cars does currently produce more emissions than manufacturing conventional cars because of the batteries – and that is because the process is still largely powered by fossil fuels.

Inside the factory

Northvolt Ett

“Batteries so far have been produced mainly on coal power,” says Thor. “If you use coal power, you repeat the mistakes of the past, creating a large carbon footprint.”

That is why this factory is in the north of Sweden where there is plenty of hydropower and renewable electricity. The emissions per battery made here are 70 per cent lower than those made in China, says Thor, and Northvolt’s aim is to get that figure to 90 per cent.

There is no way to independently verify this claim, but simply siting a factory in Sweden rather than China would reduce the carbon footprint of a battery by 40 per cent, a recent report by the non-profit organisation Transport & Environment concluded. That is based on how much electricity comes from low-carbon sources in these countries.

At Northvolt Ett, there are separate buildings for each of the three main steps in the manufacturing process. It starts with the production of powders containing the raw materials that make up the anode and cathode. We aren’t allowed into this building, as respirators have to be worn inside.

 

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In the second step, housed in two buildings more than 340 metres long and 110 metres wide, the powders are turned into a slurry using giant mixers, explains Bäckström. These slurries are spread on giant rolls of very thin foil and then dried in enormous ovens. One tiny part of these ovens is the only internal part of the factory I am allowed to photograph.

The anode and cathode are made on different sides of the building before being interfolded and placed in a cell, which is then filled with electrolyte. The process takes place in positive-pressure rooms to keep out contaminants and is largely automated.

The factory site is large enough to contain the Pentagon

Northvolt Ett

Finally, there is the formation and ageing building. “It’s like a cheese factory,” says Bäckström. I am not allowed in there either, but basically when a lithium battery is first charged, a film forms on the anode whose properties determine battery performance. Afterwards, batteries are monitored for several weeks to ensure their quality.

Off in the distance, Bäckström points out the latest building to be finished, which will house the largest battery recycling plant in the world. It will recover lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, and supply half of the materials needed for cathode production here.

Northvolt’s efforts to make battery production greener go well beyond the factory gates. It is buying raw materials from nearby mines where possible and also intends to use electric trucks to ferry materials to and from the nearby harbour.

 

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The company has also set up a test site for electric planes at the small airport nearby. Northvolt is developing lithium metal batteries specifically for aviation, with an energy density up to twice that of conventional lithium-ion versions. The former have anodes made of lithium metal, reducing weight compared with the coated copper foil anodes I saw being made.

I leave Skellefteå greatly encouraged. It is fantastic to see a company investing billions to do things at the speed and scale needed if we are to get anywhere near net zero by 2050. But as massive as it is, Northvolt Ett isn’t enough. With more than 10 million cars sold in Europe every year, we still need a lot more battery gigafactories.

Michael Le Page’s trip was paid for by Vargas, the parent company of Northvolt