The Rise and Fall of Northvolt: from Sustainability to Battery Geopolitics and Industrial Failure in the European Nordics

Thomas Lapi () and Florian Vidal ()
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Thomas Lapi: LIED (UMR_8236) - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Energies de Demain - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité, UPCité - Université Paris Cité
Florian Vidal: UiT - The Arctic University of Norway [Tromsø, Norway], LIED (UMR_8236) - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Energies de Demain - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité

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Abstract: Northvolt was one of Europe's most ambitious electric vehicle battery manufacturers and recyclers. The Group aimed to produce low-carbon and recycled lithium-ion batteries in the gigafactory Northvolt Ett located in Skellefteå, northern Sweden. Its rapid development and abrupt collapse in a seemingly favourable policy context provide a critical entry point into the political economy of Europe's decarbonisation and reindustrialisation agenda. Based on an interdisciplinary single-case study, this article reconstructs Northvolt's trajectory at multiple territorial and governance levels (across municipal, Swedish, Nordic, and European policy levels). It draws on a qualitative research framework combining documentary analysis, field visits in Sweden, and seventeen semi-structured interviews with a multi-level sample (workers, industrial actors, researchers, trade union representatives and policymakers). We show that Northvolt's arrival was embedded in a broader shift in transition governance, from sustainability-oriented goals towards geopolitical and supply-security concerns. Yet, this reframing lacked corresponding transformation of public intervention instruments, leaving limited public capacities for strategic coordination and crisis response. This article analyses how this policy architecture helped Northvolt to build financial credibility, but simultaneously failed to address the project's systemic vulnerabilities. Two potential drivers of the failure at Northvolt Ett are examined in depth: offtake-related constraints and operational misalignments. Overall, the article brings an empirical analysis of the collapse of a European battery champion to the literature on the political economy of the energy transition.

Keywords: Northvolt; Battery; Critical raw materials; European policy; Sweden; Sustainability; Geopolitics; Northvolt Ett (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03-26
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05759006v1
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