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General Market Commentary
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General Energy
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General Market Commentary
Europe to spend billions on lithium-ion battery plants
One in every twenty Europeans works in the automotive industry and the European Union believesthat unless it catches up on battery technology, those jobs are at risk.
That’s why the group is planning to allow state aid for electric battery research and will offer billions to companies willing to build giant plants, it said Monday.
“Batteries will be as essential to the automotive industry of the 21st century as the combustion engine was in the 20th century,” Maros Sefcovic, energy vice president of the European Commission, said commenting on the one-year anniversary of the European Battery Alliance (EBA). “If the EU is to maintain its leadership in the automotive sector, but also in clean energy systems, it has to have independent capacity to develop and produce batteries.”
The pieces are in place and the objective is clear — to reduce reliance on batteries from Asia, particularly, China and South Korea, as European carmakers come under increasing pressure to catch onto the ongoing electric vehicles (EVs) boom.
Battery cell maker Northvolt, which has already begun building in Sweden what will be Europe’s largest lithium-ion battery cell factory, said Monday it would ask the European Investment Bank (EIB) for additional funds to speed up construction.
It also said it had secured a deal with German carmaker BMW and Belgian materials and recycling firm Umicore to design and commercialize a process that would give vehicle batteries a second lease of life as storage products before recycling them.
BMW will provide expertise in battery cell development and Umicore will be responsible for developing active anode and cathode materials and recycling, the companies said.
The EU says partnership like this are set to boom as EBA now offers five types of funding, some of which allow country members to finance 100 percent of research, as long as they involve some cross-border projects.