FREYR Battery
Company Name: FREYR Battery
Headquarters: Luxembourg
Ticker: FREY listed on the NYSE
Year Incorporated: 2018
Category: Energy Storage / Li-ion Battery Technology
Profile from Company: FREYR Battery aims to provide industrial scale clean battery solutions to reduce global emissions. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange, FREYR’s mission is to produce green battery cells to accelerate the decarbonization of energy and transportation systems globally. FREYR has commenced building the first of its planned factories in Mo i Rana, Norway and announced potential development of industrial scale battery cell production in Vaasa, Finland, and the United States. FREYR intends to install 50 GWh of battery cell capacity by 2025 and 100 GWh annual capacity by 2028 and 200 GWh of annual capacity by 2030.
FREYR’s Arctic Giga Site
FREYR through the Net-Zero Ninety Lens
FREYR is building out lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity to supply energy storage and electric vehicle markets. FREYR has started building its first facility in Mo I Rana, Norway called ‘Giga Arctic’ with first production scheduled for 2024, and has started preparing for its second site ‘Giga America’. FREYR was listed on the New York Stock exchange in 2021 through a reverse merger with Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) Alussa Energy Acquisition Corp.
Sustainable Scalability
The company targets >50GWh/year production by 2026 and >200 GWh annual capacity by 2030 (enough capacity to build over 2 million long range electric vehicles each year). To put that capacity into perspective, the battery market will require up to 15,000 GWh per annum in a net-zero future. The majority of the first wave of capacity (Giga Arctic) has offtake agreements in place (from Honeywell & other customers) and the company is targeting >60% firm offtake for the planned production out to 2032. FREYR will concentrate on LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry where the company has secured supply chain agreements for key inputs. LFP chemistry avoids the use of expensive, potentially supply constrained inputs like cobalt.
Lean Green Economics
FREYR has partnered with 24M Technologies (founded by MIT’s Dr. Yet-Ming Chan) to leverage a unique, highly efficient manufacturing process that the company believes will enable a future battery price point 20% cheaper than the competition and with 80% fewer CO2 emissions. FREYR’s Norwegian manufacturing location provides cheap renewable energy, whilst scale advantages, low construction costs, and the highly efficient use of energy, materials, and labour further reduce the cost and emissions. FREYR target 15 kg CO2 emissions per kWh of battery cell and <$65 per kWh cell cost (by 2025) - if they can deliver this should prove highly competitive.
A Boat for the Moat
LFP battery technology is well established but historically has been less favoured by electric car makers because it has ~10-15% added weight/volume when compared to other cobalt-containing battery chemistries (eg NMC). FREYR will focus on energy storage solutions first (eg grid electricity storage) which require durability and safety and have less emphasis on weight or volume. Longer term, it seems likely the company will look to enter the marine and mass-market electric vehicle space, where small range sacrifices due to weight/volume (~3% les range for LFP versus NMC 622 in an average car) are more than compensated by better battery stability and more sustainable supply chains.
Other Pure-Play Lithium-ion companies: CBAK Energy Technology, CATL, CALB, Flux Power Holdings, Eguana Technologies, Electrovaya, EnerSys, EVE energy Co., Fluence Energy, Gotion, Northvolt, Samsung SDI, Romeo Power, Leclanche SA, QuantumScape Corporation, Solid Power.
Transportation & Light Vehicles in a Net-Zero Future
Reaching Net-Zero by the middle of this century requires that our energy supply will increasingly shift towards electricity (from 20% to ~80%), and our electricity will be increasingly supplied from wind and solar PV (from 10% to ~80%). Renewable electricity is already the cheapest form of power generation in the World, but as the installed capacity continues to increase, wind and solar pv will continue to get cheaper still (20-30% cost reductions each time installations double). As renewables become a larger share of the grid, solutions will need to be deployed to better manage energy supply and energy demand balancing over the short-, medium-, and long-term. This will require advances in electricity demand management, better integration of electricity grids, and large-scale deployment of energy storage technologies. Lithium-ion batteries provide a high performance, cost effective, solution for short-term storage (hours) which thanks to the advent of electric vehicles are getting 30% cheaper everytime production is doubled. The technological roadmap for battery technology tells us there will be a host of chemistries, cell structures, and battery pack technologies used for different applications. The lithium-ion battery companies of the future are vying for a market worth up to $140 billion per year, and indirectly helping to eliminate ~10% of global emissions.
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