NEWS

A Norwegian battery company has been working since 2022 to open a supersize factory outside of Atlanta that will bring more than 700 jobs to the region.

Freyr Battery is developing a manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries that it says will be less expensive and have less waste than the processes many competitors use. The batteries would be available for stationary energy storage and for use in electric vehicles.

The Georgia plant is one of the many projects whose existence is at least in part due to the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s 2022 climate law.

But Freyr has hit some potholes on its way to the Peach State.

The company said in November that it would not meet a target for one of its technical milestones by the end of 2023, and it was delaying the opening of a large-scale plant in Norway. One upshot was that the plant in Coweta County, already in the works about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta with a projected opening of 2026, would go online before the one in Norway.

Investors reacted negatively and the company’s share price dropped by about half.

This all occurred in Birger Steen’s first few months as Freyr’s CEO. The company board appointed him to the role in September, and said the previous CEO, cofounder Tom Einar Jensen, would become executive chairman. Steen has about 30 years of experience in the technology sector, including stints leading Microsoft’s operations in Norway and Russia.