By P Gosselin
Denial of failure in Germany…leaders insist e-car production plants are needed (even though cars aren’t selling).
The Swedish Northvolt Drama
This drama about the battery factory has entered the next round. NDR German public broadcasting reports on the closure of the main plant in Sweden.
There is more bad news from battery manufacturer Northvolt: The insolvency administrator has announced that battery cell production in Skellefteå in northern Sweden, Northvolt’s main plant, is to be shut down. It is to be completely shut down by 30 June – if no buyer can be found by then. This means that the company will completely cease production in its home country. However, the search for a new investor is still ongoing, according to reports. There are also potential buyers for the various business areas within the Northvolt Group. ‘The talks and negotiations are ongoing and are at various stages,’ said insolvency administrator Mikael Kubu in the press release.”
In Germany, the conservative-green coalition state government in Schleswig-Holstein remains surprisingly still optimistic about the planned plant in Heide. Perhaps it has to be, given the sums that the state and federal government have guaranteed and already paid.
According to a spokesperson for the German Northvolt subsidiary, the events in Sweden have no impact on the planned site in Heide (Dithmarschen district). Northvolt Germany is formally independent of Northvolt AB in Sweden and is therefore not affected by the insolvency proceedings for the time being. The search for investors is continuing, according to the spokesperson. There is great interest in the site near Heide. Insolvency administrator Mikael Kubu in Sweden had not yet commented specifically on the German subsidiary.
Despite the insolvency of the Swedish parent company, construction is continuing at Heide. Currently, the focus is more on the infrastructure on the construction site.
Despite the bad news from Sweden, many members of parliament from Schleswig-Holstein still see the opportunity for the site in Dithmarschen. ‘There will be an investor, I am very confident about that,’ said Lasse Petersdotter (Green Party) to NDR Schleswig-Holstein. Lukas Kilian (CDU conservatives) spoke of Northvolt’s ‘silverware’. ‘If you can sell something, then you have to look at this location and develop it further,’ he said. ‘We have the green electricity, we have the good connections, we have the experts there.’
Kianusch Stender (SPD socialists) expressed a similar view: ‘Over 100 hectares of levelled building land with planning permission already in place. We have virtually everything we need. This is a prime piece of land for any investor.’ Bernd Buchholz (FDP free democrats) was somewhat less euphoric: ‘The chance for Heide really only lies in a strategic investor who is able to operate a battery cell production facility themselves.’
Economics Minister Claus Ruhe Madsen is also in favour of Heide: ‘There are reports that say we need up to 30 production sites in Europe. And we naturally want to ensure that one of them is in Schleswig-Holstein,’ he said.”
How is all this supposed to work? Where has the money gone? How well was it checked in advance?
Northvolt has practically no production and no more customers.
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The Northvolt owners should approach the Australian Government. They are experts at putting good money after bad in their vain efforts to tame the weather.
Imagine if Australia had spent more money on batteries, that woulds have avoided the big floods of the past week.
The rest of the world may be losing climate ambition but the Australian Federal Government is stepping up to the plate replete with OPM and no shortage of optimism after an overwhelming election win.
“Imagine if Australia had spent more money on batteries, that would have avoided the big floods of the past week.”
Are you sure ?? 😉
Anyone have any idea what might happen when a large lithium battery facility gets flooded ??
They could just build it on stilts.
He was being sarcastic!!!
NeverAvolt
Pretty obvious – solar panels or a wind farm. What could possibly go wrong?
100 hectares of natural landscape “levelled”- if it was to build housing, the enviros probably would have complained saying there are rare species on site- but for “renewable energy” it’s fine
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them.”
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”
— Charles Mackay
and the newest folly is AI- so far I’m not impressed, but then again haven’t played with it- maybe I’ll also be captivated when I do play with it 🙂
Or if it comes after you.
I’ve been playing around with AI and I’m very impressed with it. I wouldn’t write that if I didn’t mean it. While no one knows the future of course, I think AI has enormous potential, especially in robotics and self-driving cars and trucks. This isn’t like nuclear fusion that’s always ten years away, AI is happening right now.
I’ve played with it a bit and am unimpressed. That it requires massive amounts of energy to do what my puny human brain can do fueled by a cup of coffee and slice of toast is concerning. That it also gets the wrong answer regularly will not earn my trust.
E.g. a few days ago I asked Bing’s Copilot to solve the daily Cryptoquote from the newspaper. It stumbled around through about 30 tries before it even got half the words right. I got bored and gave up on it. It took me about 5 minutes to solve.
Yes, and TV had enormous potential. And the Internet had enormous potential. And social media had enormous potential.
But WE must win the AI race. Why?
So that when AI takes over the world, we’re bowing to OUR AI overlords and not THEIRS?
Maybe it won’t be that one and only one nation wins- many will have it with variations – each of which has some merits and negatives.
Never a truer word…
It’s as if he predicted Social Media.
This from google AI
Northvolt AB, a Swedish battery manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy in Sweden on March 12, 2025. The company, which aimed to compete with Chinese battery manufacturers, struggled to secure necessary funding and faced challenges in ramping up production. The bankruptcy is considered the largest in modern Swedish industrial history.
Hey ho and another one bites the dust. “Swede walks warily down the street with the brim pulled way down low.”…
‘we have the experts here’. But not the only expert that matters: ‘common sense’.
Northvolt goes…. South.
And it didn’t take long.
The “green energy” titanic scam has hit the iceberg of reality. Painful to watch, but its inevitable end looms large.
more like fun to watch 🙂
Yep, if green energy were better, we’d have had it years ago without governments having to offer subsidies.
And AGW goes out, not with a bang, but a whimper. Think of what could have been done with all that money! The Chinese cornered the renewable market (and others!) as planned and now they are left holding the bag.
Or, just think of how we’d be if we just hadn’t spent the money at all.
Ideologues cannot accept facts that conflict with their ideology.
Losses Incurred:
Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO): Invested $400 million in Northvolt through convertible bonds, which has been written down following Northvolt’s bankruptcy .
Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS): Suffered a loss of $325 million from its investment in Northvolt .
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ): Wrote down its $150 million investment in Northvolt to zero .
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB): Invested $55 million in Northvolt’s 2023 convertible note issuance; the current status of this investment has not been publicly disclosed .
Quebec Government: Confirmed a loss of $270 million invested in Northvolt’s parent company in Sweden .
These losses highlight the risks associated with large-scale investments in emerging technologies and industries.
Any trustees using retirement savings for investments like this need to front up to the people whose money they have pi55ed up against a wall and explain why it was such a good idea. A few very public confrontations with those whose retirement was imminent might make trustees elsewhere much more wary.
Canada: no business case for pipelines with 3rd largest reserves in the world.
Lose a $ billion dollars on EV batteries instead.
Quebec possesses substantial natural gas reserves, primarily within the Utica Shale formation in the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Estimates of these recoverable reserves vary:
Canada Energy Regulator (2019): 22 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of marketable natural gas resources in Quebec.
Energy In Depth (2019): Between 250 and 1,150 billion cubic meters (approximately 8.8 to 40.6 Tcf) of recoverable natural gas.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (2013): 31 Tcf of technically recoverable natural gas in the Utica Shale.
Despite these significant reserves, Quebec currently has no commercial natural gas production. In 2018, the province banned hydraulic fracturing, a technique essential for extracting shale gas.
Consequently, Quebec relies entirely on imported natural gas to meet its energy needs.
Hmmm… I wonder if all the brave words from Schleswig-Holstein is like whistling past the grave yard after dark?
The history of WWII shows the Germans are very good at denying reality for surprisingly long periods of time.
More good news. Germany is so disappointing.