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Northvolt

Northvolt is a European battery manufacturer focused on sustainable battery cells with minimal carbon footprint and high recycling ambitions to enable Europe's transition to renewable energy.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Arthur Corbin (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné)

9 Apr 2025 · Automotive

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Commissioner) and

21 Feb 2025 · High-level meeting with the Automotive industry

Northvolt urges rapid adoption of battery waste classification rules

1 Nov 2024
Topic — Revision of the European List of Waste regarding waste batteries and treatment residues.
Message — Northvolt welcomes the draft decision and calls for its quick adoption. They argue it creates a uniform framework for handling waste batteries across the EU.12
Why — A streamlined hazard classification system reduces regulatory complexity for their battery recycling operations.3
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Northvolt calls for stricter EU battery recycling efficiency calculations

18 Oct 2024
Topic — Methodology for calculating and verifying recycling efficiency and recovery of materials from waste batteries.
Message — Northvolt calls for amending the act to include iron and phosphorus in recycling efficiency calculations. They also want battery manufacturing waste included as an input fraction and equivalent standards for recycling performed outside the EU.12
Why — This protects Northvolt’s market position by ensuring competitors cannot use loopholes to misrepresent recycling performance.34
Impact — Environmental protections suffer because the proposed exemptions increase landfill risks and hide low recovery rates.56
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Meeting with Yvan Verougstraete (Member of the European Parliament)

19 Sept 2024 · Northvolt's role in the battery sector

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič), Dino Toljan (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič), Kamil Talbi (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič) and

18 Jun 2024 · Batteries

Northvolt backs urgent EU carbon footprint rules for batteries

28 May 2024
Topic — A proposal defining the methodology for calculating carbon footprints of electric vehicle batteries.
Message — Northvolt calls for the immediate establishment of the framework to provide regulatory certainty. They support electricity modelling rules that are simple and directly implementable on a global level. They also want to prevent resource shuffling when accounting for renewable energy.123
Why — These standards provide transparency that benefits suppliers specializing in low-carbon battery production.4
Impact — Manufacturers using resource shuffling to misrepresent their renewable energy use would be penalized.5
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Meeting with Pär Holmgren (Member of the European Parliament)

15 Apr 2024 · Meeting

Meeting with Delara Burkhardt (Member of the European Parliament)

25 Mar 2024 · batteries

Meeting with Ditte Juul-Joergensen (Director-General Energy) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

23 Feb 2024 · Energy market

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Executive Vice-President) and

30 Nov 2023 · Clean Transition Dialogue on Energy Intensive Industries

Meeting with Joan Canton (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

26 Sept 2023 · Critical raw materials act, net zero industry act

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič)

26 Sept 2023 · Energy

Meeting with Nicola Beer (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

31 Aug 2023 · Critical Raw Materials Act (Meeting held by parliamentary assistant)

Northvolt seeks EU funding and faster permitting for battery manufacturing

27 Jun 2023
Topic — The European proposal establishes a framework for strengthening the continent's net-zero technology manufacturing.
Message — The company requests that the legislation covers the entire battery supply chain. They also urge for EU-level funding to de-risk investments and match global support schemes.12
Why — Public funding and faster permitting would reduce financial risks and accelerate battery production.3
Impact — Producers of low-cost technologies lose out if auctions prioritize lifetime costs over upfront prices.45
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Response to European Critical Raw Materials Act

1 Jun 2023

Access to and supply of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) is crucial to the European energy transition and to the EUs broader industrial and strategic goals. For the EUs battery industry, domestic supplies of relevant CRMs remain insufficient to meet expected demand and challenges to cost-competitive access to these materials both in Europe and in third countries endure for European industrial players. Northvolt welcomes the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRM Act) proposed in March 2023, which represents a considerable step in improving the supply of raw materials needed for the green transition. Measures regarding eased permitting for strategic projects and the focus on sustainability and circularity are conducive to building a more secure and sustainable raw materials supply chain. If these measures are comprehensively implemented, they will substantially contribute to risk mitigation objectives, eliminating the necessity for market-intervention provisions as outlined in Chapter 4. The Chapter should therefore be reduced to only core monitoring provisions, while removing measures on stockpiling, company risk preparedness, and joint purchasing (Art. 21, 22, 23 & 24). However, access to funding for strategic projects will remain a barrier to the achievement of the Acts long-term goals. Therefore, in addition to the provisions described in this document, Northvolt supports the implementation of tangible financial provisions through a dedicated European CRM Fund.
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Meeting with Mohammed Chahim (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Rare Earths Norway AS

26 Apr 2023 · CRMA

Meeting with Dimitri Lorenzani (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič)

7 Feb 2023 · Discussion on European Battery Alliance - next steps

Meeting with Pierre-Arnaud Proux (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager), Stina Soewarta (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager)

7 Feb 2023 · Green industrial plan

Meeting with Valdis Dombrovskis (Executive Vice-President)

20 Dec 2022 · European battery value chain - US Inflation Reduction Act

Meeting with Rasmus Andresen (Member of the European Parliament)

30 Nov 2022 · How to improve the conditions for a sustainable battery value chain?

Meeting with Ismail Ertug (Member of the European Parliament)

30 Nov 2022 · Battery production

Meeting with Niclas Herbst (Member of the European Parliament)

30 Nov 2022 · EU Strategy for Battery Production

Response to European Critical Raw Materials Act

23 Nov 2022

Northvolt is a European supplier of sustainable, high-quality battery cells and systems. Our mission is to build the greenest battery in the world with a minimal carbon footprint and the highest ambitions for recycling to enable the European transition to renewable energy. Founded in 2016 to enable the transition to a decarbonized future, we aim not only to pioneer a new battery industry for Europe, but to set the global benchmark for sustainability in the battery industry. Raw materials are a necessity for achieving a climate neutral future and reaching the EUs climate targets. Northvolt therefore welcomes the European Commissions initiative on a Critical Raw Materials Act. Overall, Northvolt wants to highlight three core objectives that should be included in the act to address constraints most efficiently in the supply of critical raw materials for the battery industry: 1) De-risking and de-stigmatizing responsible investment in high-quality, strategically, and economically viable projects that otherwise suffer from a lack of access to viable financing opportunities. 2) Developing and expanding the coverage of Free Trade Agreements and trade/investment protocols with resource-rich countries in which extant high-quality reserves, potential high-quality reserves, and efficient refining capacity of critical raw materials exist. Particular focus on third countries including (but not limited to) the following: Australia, Chile, DRC, Madagascar and Bolivia. 3) Strengthening recycling capacity by ensuring that existing and future EU regulatory mechanisms directly benefit, or do not negatively impact supplies of critical raw materials. Especially the export of black mass, end-of-life batteries and manufacturing scrap should be limited to keep valuable recycling resources available to the European market. Please see attached Northvolt's response to this consultation.
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Meeting with Kerstin Jorna (Director-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs)

16 Nov 2022 · On the side of the EU Raw Materials week High Level Conference, the parties met to discuss current issues related to raw materials and batteries supply

Meeting with Erik Bergkvist (Member of the European Parliament)

21 Sept 2022 · Studiebesök

Meeting with Emma Wiesner (Member of the European Parliament)

19 May 2022 · Inspirationsföreläsning Fit for 55

Meeting with Abir Al-Sahlani (Member of the European Parliament)

9 May 2022 · företagsbesök om kompetensförsörjning

Meeting with Rozalina Petrova (Cabinet of Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius), Simonas Satunas (Cabinet of Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius)

23 Mar 2022 · the Green Deal ambitions and energy transition, the Waste Shipment Regulation, the Fit for 55 package

Meeting with Agnieszka Skonieczna (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton), Joan Canton (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

18 Nov 2021 · Batteries action plan

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Executive Vice-President)

16 Nov 2021 · Online meeting with the Nothvolt on re-skilling/up-skilling

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

11 Oct 2021 · Batteries and green steel

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Executive Vice-President) and

21 Jan 2021 · Northvolt leadership day

Response to Modernising the EU’s batteries legislation

15 Jan 2021

Northvolt has read the European Commission proposal for a new Battery Regulation, COM(2020) 798/3, and sends this letter with response and comments to the text. In general, Northvolt welcomes the ambitious policy for establishing recycling requirements, policy to ensure carbon transparency towards consumers (carbon footprint) and requirements to ensure thorough due diligence processes on battery raw materials. Overall, Northvolt sees the Commission proposal as a large step in the right direction. However, a few critical points have been identified for further improvements; where clarifications, changes or additions are needed to establish a well-functioning regulatory framework.
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Response to Climate change mitigation and adaptation taxonomy

18 Dec 2020

Consultation answer: EU Taxonomy Delegated Act Northvolt has read the European Commission draft delegated regulation and annexes on sustainable finance, “the Taxonomy”, and would like to raise two (2) critical elements for feedback. i) Differentiation of energy storage technologies ii) Criteria on energy production & hydropower i) Differentiation of energy storage technologies Two of the activities in Annex 1 in the draft delegated act covers manufacturing of energy storage components such as batteries, activity 3.3 and 4.10. However, the two activities do not take environmental from the battery production into consideration or distinguishes between production with high and low environmental impact. The life cycle environmental impact for batteries varies from 30-50 kgCO2/kWh up to 150-200 kgCO2/kWh. The new Battery Regulation presented by the Commission 2020-12-10 proposes mandatory carbon footprint labelling of batteries, based on the PEF-CR methodology, which provides a methodology to measure and compare environmental performance of battery production. The taxonomy should take this distinction between battery types and the life cycle emissions from components into consideration when setting the included activities in the delegated act, to differentiate between carbon intensive activities and low impact component production. ii) Criteria on energy production & hydropower Sweden has today an almost completely decarbonized electricity system. However, in the current proposal of the delegated act, a large part of Swedish electricity and heating sectors may not be considered taxonomy-aligned according to the proposed delegated acts under the Taxonomy Regulation. This sends the wrong market signals, as Europe and Europe’s industries will need large amounts of decarbonized electricity to become carbon neutral. One of the main issues is the criteria on sustainable energy production from hydropower. One important general principle of the taxonomy is that the sustainability criteria of the delegated acts shall not go beyond other legislation within the EU. When the financial criteria in the taxonomy become stricter than current regulations, ordinary decision-making processes are overridden, which brings substantial legal uncertainty into activities that aim at improving climate and environmental performance. Thus, the delegated act criteria may counteract the aim of already existing regulation and cause sub-optimized and more expensive environmental protection.
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Meeting with Andrea Beltramello (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis)

18 Nov 2020 · Sustainability of batteries

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Executive Vice-President) and

15 Oct 2020 · Industrial foresight

Meeting with Nicolas Schmit (Commissioner) and

24 Sept 2020 · Pact for Skills Roundtable with the automotive sector.

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

23 Sept 2020 · Roundtable skills for the Automotive sector

Response to Revision of the Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001

21 Sept 2020

As one of the first homegrown battery manufacturers in Europe, Northvolt’s mission is to produce the world’s greenest batteries. Hence, Northvolt have always been strong advocates of carbon footprint declarations for battery cells and products. Available tools, such as the Commission initiative on Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) will ensure “communicating life cycle environmental performance to business partners, consumers and other company stakeholders”. The new initiatives on Carbon footprint declarations are good tools to stimulate use of renewable energy to fulfil the targets set by Directive EU2018/2001.However, Article 19 on Guarantees of Origin needs adjustments in order for the directive to fully capture the potential of renewable energy in Europe. Northvolts sees one main critical issue with the current Guarantee of Origin scheme that needs to be resolved before having fate in the system, namely time resolution. The guarantee of origin scheme is applied on annual basis, which contributes to significant system weaknesses. To industrial operators this means that the Guarantees of origin system cannot support statements or ambitions on 100% renewable energy consumption, at any given time. Even operations fully covered by guarantees of origin could, and will most likely, be dependent on other energy sources as the aspect of power demand is not accounted for in the Guarantees of origin scheme. This means that even an electricity consumer with 100% GOs for renewable electricity, could be supplied by non-renewable electricity to cover power demand at certain time periods. The current system is therefor insufficient to claim ‘green’ electricity use to consumers, in a reliable and trustworthy way. If the certificates would be generated and canceled with time resolution closer to the use, i.e. in real time or based on hourly data, the scheme would be a more reliable source proofing 100% utilization of renewable energy sources. The identified market failures enable industries to buy an annual amount GOs at low cost, without proof of 100% renewable sourcing nor physical possibility to supply, “buying themselves free” to claim renewable energy sourcing. As carbon footprint declarations is a critical tool to provide consumers with carbon transparency data, GOs opens the door towards greenwashing and could potentially harm trustworthiness of the industry. Hence, Northvolt does not support that carbon footprint calculations or LCA analysis should include renewable energy claims only supported by the current scheme of GOs. To avoid this and ensure Directive 2018/2001 provides sound tools to stimulate renewable energy usage, the GO system needs to be updated and reviewed to better support industry and consumers in the energy transition. The main criticality of the Guarantee of Origin scheme is the time resolution of the certificates. However, instruments for data collection and validation are in place to introduce a system utilizing real time data – ensuring renewable electricity production at all time. A reviewed scheme with a more granular time resolution would ensure consumers that green claims are backed with actual 100% renewable energy production, at any given time. This would empower consumers, stimulate real energy transition and enable Europe to reach the renewable energy targets set by Europe 2030 goals and fulfil the ambitions set in the Paris Agreement. To conclude, Northvolt asks the Commission to: - Review and amend Article 19 in Directive (EU) 2018/2001 to make sure Guarantees of origin are generated and canceled in real time or with hourly time resolution. Read full description in attached file.
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Response to Modernising the EU’s batteries legislation

3 Jul 2020

That there is a need for a revised battery directive and new regulation to fully benefit from the potential of a growing battery industry is evident. Northvolt would like to underline a few points regarding the inception impact assessment in order to have the new regulation in place as timely and effectively as possible. The full feedback will be submitted as attached file. Northvolt sees great potential in the coming regulation to be a driver for sustainability in the battery industry. The impact assessment should: + Assess how the new regulation can push sustainability as a key competitiveness factor and increase consumer transparency on key environmental indicators for batteries. + Analyze how the regulation can increase importance and availability of sustainability parameters to to complement aspects driven by the battery industry and the market today, such as performance, quality and price, and doing so without creating barriers to technical development or market uptake of batteries There is a clear lack of comparability in environmental performance of batteries. Compared to products regulated by the eco-labelling directive, the use phase of a battery is only a small share of the environmental impact. The largest part of the battery emissions during its lifetime relates to energy used in the production of the battery and the raw materials used. In order to provide consumers with accurate information about environmental performance the impact assessment must: + Analyze how a mandatory declaration of a battery’s carbon footprint can be introduced to ensure consumer transparency and stimulate active consumer choices. Responsible sourcing of raw materials must be a hygiene factor on the European market as the battery industry is growing in Europe and a responsible and sustainable value chain is critical. The impact assessment must include: + An assessment of a solid framework ensuring that raw materials are purchased ethically and sustainably in the battery value chain; at minimum the OECD guidelines for ethical sourcing should be followed. High quality battery cell production is today pushed heavily by OEMs and costumers on the market today. Cost and quality will always be key critical parameters to the industry and the development in these areas have been rapid. The impact assessment must address: + The fact the regulation of some design parameters, such as lifetime, has the potential to negatively impact battery performance in other fields such as range, fast charge or power output, and that the technological development today is rapid in this area. Northvolt recognizes that some actors see potential in reusing batteries after they are deemed no longer fit-for-purpose with respect to their first and originally intended application and life. However, we believe that the upcoming regulation must recognize that second life introduces several challenges. The impact assessment must: + Assess and rationalize when and why it is necessary to introduce political measures to regulate data sharing and why additional measures are needed to complement the contact-based data sharing that takes place between market actors today and assess how the original manufacturer can confirm suitability for new applications to assure safe and risk-free operations The revision of the battery directive opens up the opportunity to set high ambitions for battery collection and recycling. This will be critical to achieve a sustainable battery industry, transform the battery industry to a circular economy and close the loop on battery materials. The impact assessment must: + Investigate appropriate measure to achieve 100% recycling of used batteries with highest possible material recovery rates, for all batteries on the European market. Complete Northvolt feedback of 20 bullets will be provided in the attached file.
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Meeting with Sarah Nelen (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

12 May 2020 · Batteries legislation and sustainability

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

20 Apr 2020 · the automotive industry ecosystem - recovery measures

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič)

31 Mar 2020 · Battery regulation - Sustainable Batteries

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Vice-President)

26 Sept 2019 · European Battery Alliance

Meeting with Maroš Šefčovič (Vice-President)

29 Jan 2019 · European Battery Alliance

Meeting with Jos Delbeke (Director-General Climate Action)

22 Jun 2017 · Batteries development

Meeting with Telmo Baltazar (Cabinet of President Jean-Claude Juncker)

28 Mar 2017 · Energy Union