Sebastien Sabillon, Global Reporter
31 January, 2024
In the country of meatballs, IKEA, and the home of Zlatan Ibrahimivavic, Sweden has once again brought a wonder in the world. With top battery producer Northvolt making a major breakthrough in the battery industry, potentially steering Europe from Chinese dependence in the battery market.
Founded in 2015, the company says its new sodium-ion battery doesn’t use the critical minerals lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt-and it has an energy density of 160 watt-hours per kilogram, making it suitable for large-scale energy storage. It may be below the average 250-300 watt-hours per kilo lithium batteries in electric cars typically have. Instead of the critical minerals, which have fluctuating prices and a potential fire hazard; Northvolt’s new batteries use a form of the pigment Prussian blue, according to the Financial Times reports.
According to Patrik Andreasson, Northvolt’s vice-president of strategy and sustainability, per the Guardian, “Using sodium-ion technology is not new but we think this is the first product ever completely free from critical raw materials. It is a fundamental breakthrough. This provides an option that is not dependent on certain parts of the world, including China.”
An article by Sifted describes batteries without critical minerals as a type of “holy grail for the green transition.” Anders Thor, the company’s communications director, says that while this generation of batteries is best suited for energy storage, there is a “distinct path towards higher energy densities that also enables them for usage for vehicles, which will severely reduce cost and increase sustainability for electric mobility.”
According to an article by Automotive News Europe, Northvolts new battery doesn’t use or contain lithium, nickel, cobalt nor graphite. Cobalt specifically is good in the sense that if this battery becomes a major success it would reduce the exploitation of slave labor in the Congo, as most batteries exploit labor mainly in the African continent for their resources.
Known for supplying lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Northvolt, believes that the sodium-ion battery market could end up being worth tens of billions of dollars, the FT reports. Making batteries at a gigafactory just below the Arctic Circle in Sweden and is now expanding in Canada and Germany as well as another one in Sweden. The company says it has not decided yet where it will manufacture the new sodium-ion battery developed in its labs.
Whatever the case, this Swedish company is now expanding fast, and with this new development it could potentially alter the future of trade, economics, sphere of influence, politics, and much more.