Electrification is crucial to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. At the same time, it is a challenge that battery technology is dependent on materials that are in short supply, and that the extraction of these materials also leads to greenhouse gas emissions. Efficient recycling is therefore crucial. As of 2020 approximately 15 million cars are sold in Europe per year and the proportion of electric cars is also increasing rapidly. This results in a great need for increased recycling capacity in the years to come. In simple words the world needs clean batteries and we need a plan for what to do with them end-of life. We need to recover the materials and use them in new batteries or other products – and not produce waste.

The Swedish battery making company Northvolt, and the energy and aluminium company Hydro from Norway have now come together to create the joint venture Hydrovolt, which is building Europe’s largest electric car battery recycling facility in Fredrikstad, Norway. The battery recycling plant is situated just next to and will work hand in glove with Batteriretur, the company that collects used batteries in Norway. The pilot will test how materials from old car batteries can be recycled with the help of new technology ensuring significantly lower energy consumption and climate footprint during the recycling process. The batteries contain valuable raw materials such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, aluminum, manganese and copper. The aluminum that is recycled is sent back to Hydro's factories to make, among other things, new battery components, while many of the remaining materials will be used to produce new batteries at North Volt's battery factory in Skellefteå. The materials that Hydro and Northvolt cannot utilize will be sold to others.

If everything goes as planned the pilot plant will be ready for production sometime during 2022. If the pilot is successful, the ambition is to build a new, larger factory that will recover a significantly larger volume. At the start, the plant will be able to handle more than 8,000 tonnes of battery modules – so about 23,000 EV batteries pr year.