In the shadow of the crisis for the battery manufacturer Northvolt, it has emerged that Chinese companies have completely stopped exporting graphite to Sweden. This could have major implications given that graphite is a mineral that is absolutely critical to the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. At present, Europe is 98 percent dependent on imports for its graphite supply.China supplies more than 60 percent of the world's natural graphite and almost all artificial graphite. This makes the situation worrying for producers who rely on the supply from the east. A stoppage in deliveries from China upsets supply chains, raises costs and disrupts production.
As graphite exports to Sweden have decreased, China's total investments in batteries and electric vehicles in Europe have increased sharply. In Hungary, China's largest battery manufacturer invested 8 billion dollars in a factory a couple of years ago. It was one of the largest foreign investments ever made in the country. In Poland, smaller but similar factories are being built by Chinese companies. At the same time, graphite exports to the two countries have soared. Hungary imported more than $230 million worth of graphite in 2022, up from just a few thousand dollars five years earlier.
One of the most promising companies in Europe's emerging battery industry has been precisely Northvolt. It is unclear what impact, if any, the halt in Chinese graphite exports has had on Northvolt's situation. But it is believed to have the potential to raise costs at a time when competition for market share is tougher than ever. It may well be that the unofficial Chinese graphite export ban is designed to stifle innovation in Europe, while China builds a foothold here. Last year, the Chinese company Putailai announced an investment of 1.3 billion dollars to build Europe's largest factory for the manufacture of anodes in Sundsvall. It is intended to become a main supplier to the Swedish battery industry.
In Sweden, we have deposits of graphite, but no active mining. The company Talga wants to open a graphite mine at Nunasvaara outside Vittangi in Kiruna municipality and is now also building the first facility for graphite anode material for batteries in Luleå. The ambition is to extract roughly 16 percent of the EU's demand for natural graphite and produce roughly 10 percent of the EU's demand for anode materials from natural graphite by the year 2030. Anodes made from the natural graphite from the bedrock in Vittangi also have a whopping 96 percent lower climate footprint than the Chinese synthetic variant where, in principle, coke is boiled with coal power. Swedish mining and production can dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the manufacture of electric vehicles, energy storage systems and consumer electronics.
For once, it is not primarily permit processes that stand in the way of the mine (even if the Supreme Court still has not decided on a review permit after a year), but it is Kiruna municipality. The board consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left Party, Sámelistu and Feministiskt Initiativ has paused work on developing a detailed plan for the mine. Despite the mine having been given the green light by both the Land and Environment Court and the higher instance, the Land and Environment Court of Appeal. But the municipality sees no advantages, only disadvantages, and wants the government to introduce an extraction tax so that the municipality can share in the mine's income. However, something like this is not relevant from the government's side. In order to resume work, municipal representatives want to see that Talga finances municipal activities or builds housing in the municipality.
Talga has rightly grown tired of the municipality's blackmail and turned to the government to order Kiruna to adopt a new detailed plan to enable the mining of the graphite. The government must now quickly and with all desirable clarity show that a municipality cannot use its planning monopoly to make unreasonable demands on an individual company, nor to slow down the development of a more sustainable European battery industry. Climate change is too important for that.
The graphite deposit in Nunasvaara is one of the world's best, and the mine is an important building block in making Europe less dependent on China. Being completely dependent on China for strategic raw materials risks both delaying and making climate transition more expensive. The country has a penchant for using trade as a means of power to punish other countries in connection with political disputes. Export bans on battery minerals such as lithium and cobalt have become increasingly common. According to the OECD, China is the biggest culprit in limiting the availability of materials needed for the transition to renewable energy.
Our dependence on China for raw materials could also reduce our freedom to act forcefully if Xi Jinping were to do as Vladimir Putin did and militarily act in his neighborhood. The idea that countries that trade with each other do not go to war with each other does not necessarily apply to megalomaniac authoritarian regimes. Europe should have learned that lesson from its dependence on Russian gas at the time of Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine. Extracting the strategic metals and minerals we have in Sweden and Europe is an important prerequisite for our continued prosperity and freedom
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