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Comment by geokon | Hacker News Reader

Usually when companies talk about an "enormous environmental toll" i get the feeling the business case must be weak. But giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming the tech is legit and it all makes economic sense, why Norway?

And if distance to market is such a crucial factor (b/c it sounds like the may business will be battery recycling), why not the geographic south? Albania also runs on 100% hydro and I'm sure the wages are a tiny fraction of Norway (not to mention the environmental/bureaucratic issues)

I noticed Northvolt employees are here, so maybe they can fill out the fluff a bit. Why Northvolt and not Southvolt?

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Are you seriously asking why they don't start a highly technical multi-billion doller project in Albania?

I would much prefer the well organised environmental/bureaucratic issues in Sweden compared to the 'issues' you would have in Albania.

Northern Europe population is far better educated. Power is cheap and green. Easy rail and ship connection to central Europe where most car factories are (far easier then from Albania). You have many battery mines developing in that region. Talga Resources has graphite mine right there and battery materials mining is developing all over Northern Europe.

In fact there is a huge explosion of battery related industry in that same region. Northvolt is just company that will soon be operating around the Baltic and Northern Europe.

> b/c it sounds like the may business will be battery recycling

For a decade plus their main business will be battery cell production.

Battery manufacturing needs a lot of land, which is dirt cheap in Northern Sweden. Another activity that needs a lot of land is mining, which is one of the primary economic activities in the otherwise desolate region.

> Corporate tax rate 22%, Mineral Production tax rate 0.2%. (1)

Also, the location has to do with special, naturally occurring deposits of anode materials nearby. iirc, either silicon or graphite forms "clumps" of just the right size and shape in this region, enabling them to skip some steps of the manufacturing process.

(1) https://www.talgagroup.com/irm/content/why-sweden.aspx?RID=3...

very interesting! Thanks for sharing :) That really answers the question

Considering the precise location ( in Sweden btw, and not just anywhere, in Northern Sweden, close to the Arctic), i presume the outside temperature matters somehow and having constantly low temperatures outside will help with cooling or similar.

Totally uneducated guess, but northern Scandinavia (and Finland) have already been used for datacenters for precisely those temperatures, and if it didn't matter it could be anywhere else with a decent "green" energy mix, like France, southern Sweden, Austria, etc.

The waste heat of some datacenters here in Finland is sold as heating service (we have a remote heat (kaukolämpö) network) so basically whenever houses need heating the datacenters make some money out of the waste heat.

I've heard that the reason is the abundant availability of green energy from hydro power.

The north of Sweden has abundant and reliable energy production indeed, the south of Sweden is struggling to meet its demands so companies that need a lot of energy don't want to take that risk. Work is being done to fix that, such as having more interconnections with the rest of Europe but it'll take a long time before it's fixed.

Also Albania simply doesn't have the infrastructure and the same access to a highly educated workforce that Sweden has.

Should be "green" in quotes. Hydro power is devestating for the river ecosystem. But it's low on greenhouse gases and maybe thats what matters at this point.

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