Wanted: 100,000 pioneers for a green job Klondike in the Arctic | Renewable energy
Oone by one, the 20 engineers and technicians step up to receive their equipment before the briefing. They have come the farthest north in Sweden from as far away as Mexico, the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, Germany and Russia.
“Welcome!” bellows Håkan Pålsson, their instructor. “We’re here to show you how to do curling, and then you go out on the ice and show us.”
This is the fourth curling pass for new arrivals organized by staff at Northvolt, a company whose car battery rig factory goes up at breathtaking speed on the outskirts of Skellefteå, this old gold mining town just 200 km south of the Arctic Circle.
The company, the city and the local county of Västerbotten do everything they can to make them feel comfortable. This summer, it was a food-seeking and wild cooking event for German engineers, considering the move north. The locals are urged to be friendly: “You will see more new faces in Skellefteå than ever before”, writes an encouraging post on the city’s website. – Their experience of Skellefteå will largely depend on how good we are at welcoming them.
Most impressive of all is the 20th floor Sara Cultural Center, which opened last month. One of the tallest wooden buildings in the world, it has two theaters, a gallery, a library and a luxury hotel.
The reason for all these efforts is simple.
If Northvolt is to succeed in its plans to build Europe’s largest battery factory, it and its host city must convince thousands of people to move to the edge of the Arctic Circle, to a region where snow cover is constant from November to April and where the winter sun does not shine more than four hours a day. .
The Giga factory is just the most advanced in a series of green industrial mega-projects that are emerging all over Sweden’s far north, attracted by cheap, renewable energy, large areas of undeveloped land and financing from the European Green Business. The developing local population compares it to Dubai or the gold rush in the Klondike.
About 160 km north in the city of Boden, H2 green steel will begin work next year on the world’s first fossil-free steelworks on an industrial scale. Neighboring it, Spanish Fertiberia plans to spend 1 billion euros on a giant green ammonia electrolysis plant, which will be used to produce fertilizer. Another 200 km north of the Arctic mining town of Gällivare, the mining company LKAB will next year launch a 20-year price of 35 billion pounds. project to switch to fossil-free iron fungus, using hydrogen technology that was successfully tested this year on Hybrit steelworks in Luleå.
Reverse migration
What these projects all desperately lack, more than money, renewable electricity, space or permits, are people.
– The weakest link in the chain is the workforce, says Lotta Finstorp, governor of Norrbotten County and a newcomer from Stockholm. “If we can not get people to move up here, we will not be able to succeed with all these much-needed investments for the world.”
The Swedish government estimates that the new projects and their suppliers will create at least 20,000 jobs, with 20,000 extra public employees and 10,000 to work in shops, cafés and the like.
In total, Sweden’s two northernmost counties could win 100,000 people in 15 years, which increases its population by a fifth, according to Peter Larsson, the man appointed by the Swedish government to coordinate this transition. It is a remarkable ambition considering that the unemployed not so long ago were paid to move south to work. Larsson believes that the key to achieving reverse migration is to convince people “that this is the best place on earth to live”.
For Liliana Celedon, a 28-year-old engineer from Mexico, it’s easy to sell. Skellefteå is about as exotic as it gets for someone from a vast, car-based city on the US border. “I have hiked, swam in the sea and only spontaneously been with nature,” she says.
Outside Skellefteå Arena, where curling is taking place, this year’s first slushy snow has just started to fall and she is looking forward to downhill skiing and cross-country skiing in the city center. For Benjamin Lindén, from southern Sweden, curling is fun but culture is a necessity. Unusual for someone in the construction industry, he began his career as a theater director and the day before curling, he watched some improvisational performances at Sara Cultural Center.
“It is an absolutely important part of my life to have [theatre] available, he says. “I actually called the theater before I came here, because I wanted to know what they had. Now with Kulturhuset, I really think it will be much better.”
Finstorp suspects that it will be more difficult to appeal to southern Swedes, such as Lindén, among whom northerners have a reputation for being obsessed with hunting, snowmobiling and snuff, and for being literally less than monosyllabic and refraining from even the word “yes” in favor of a heavy intake of breath.
Alistair Coley, a 25-year-old cell processing engineer from Sunderland in the UK, has found it surprisingly easy to make friends here. “Everyone you meet at least says ‘hello,'” he says. “He came in February with his fiancée, Claudia, and their two cockapoos, Primrose and Albert.” the Swedish stereotype that you get in the north. They want you to be here. “
They were in contact with a local couple before leaving the UK, and have since been invited to regular meals and walks. “We met them, strangely enough, through the dogs’ Instagram accounts,” says Coley.
Since then, they have gone into the country and seen the northern lights, met wild reindeer outside with their dogs, hung out on a dog beach by the Baltic Sea and experienced the Swedish midsummer celebration, filled with the traditional flower wreaths.
Regional authorities are also trying to attract locals to move home. Skellefteå, which serves as the gateway to Swedish Lapland, sends Christmas cards to everyone who has moved south in the last 10 years and hosts ice hockey and other events for migrants in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. .
Swedish not necessary
The next step is to target the approximately 400,000 unemployed who live in less dynamic parts of Sweden. Minister of Labor Eva Nordmark has promised to do “what is required” to get people to move north. even stricter welfare rules to force relocation.
At its offices across the country, Sweden’s employment service sells out the chance to take part in a “historic” green transition. It has also launched a system called Move to target the long-term unemployed in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, part-financed by the EU Social Fund.
Northvolt is especially looking for immigrants to Sweden who have a good English and technical background, says Katarina Borstedt, responsible for finding the more than 3,000 people needed for the battery factory. – You do not have to learn Swedish before you can work at Northvolt, she says.
The huge battery factory is already buzzing with construction workers in hi-vis jackets and safety helmets, as the company competes to produce its first cells by the end of this year. When completed, it will be able to manufacture batteries for 1 million cars per year. Most of those who already work at the factory have currently flown in on short-term contracts.
– They come from all over the world and are people who are attracted to this type of mega and gig project, says Fredrik Hedlund, who leads the construction. “If you look at the inside of the factory, it really is international expertise.”
Hedlund is a southerner who moved north, after selling his house in Lund the week before. His 16-year-old daughter started at the local technical high school in August.
“Northvolt is an all-in project. This is not something you fly in and fly out of, he says. “If you’ve invested in something and really want to make it work, go there.”
The vast gray boxes that rose on this 200-hectare plot are just the beginning, he says, pointing to the forest edge near one and a half kilometers away, which will mark the full extent of the finished plant.
The Giga factory, like H2 Green Steel in the north, will primarily supply the car industry 2,000 km to the south. “The majority [of production] will go to the German automotive industry, says Hedlund.
Make a difference
For many employees, the chance of being in the absolute forefront of the transition to a more sustainable future is reason enough to move. Coley, who was hired directly from Europe’s first car battery factory in Sunderland, shakes his head in admiration when he talks about Northvolt’s ambitions. Production will be run entirely with, for example, green hydropower and a battery recycling plant on site is planned.
“Other companies think they should get a pat on the back just because they only provide batteries for electric cars, but there is so much more than that,” he says. “Northvolt is really trying to act sustainably from an energy perspective, and that’s important to me. It was not about joining any battery business to make money, it was about coming here to make a difference. ”
There is a similar “pioneering spirit” in nearby Boden, says the mayor Claes Nordmark, now work begins on the new steelworks.
When the Swedish military closed its Boden base in 1998, it lost 10% of its population in two years. In Skellefteå, the story was similar after a large copper smelter reduced its number of employees from 3,000 to 800.
Unemployment in Sweden’s two northernmost counties fell only after the unemployed were paid to move south.
Skellefteå had the lowest 1,500 empty flats, some of which were sold for a nominal price of one krona. The one-kronor apartments are now being sold for up to one million, while Skellefteå and Boden are competing to build thousands of new homes.
Decades of decline may have paved the way for today’s success. Boden and Skellefteå bought huge areas of land and connected them to the electricity grid on the main grid in the hope of copying next to Luleå, where Facebook opened its European data center in 2013.
In what now looks like a stroke of luck, both failed to win their long-awaited data centers, leaving them with perfect, ready-made places for the new generation of green industrial mega-projects.
The tough years also explain why there is some resistance to the coming wave of labor immigration. After years when young people, and especially young women, have moved south, which gives the north the oldest population in Sweden, everyone welcomes an influx of 20- to 40-year-olds, wherever they come from.
– Something good, something else is happening, says Pålsson, the 66-year-old curling instructor, after seeing the newcomers to Skellefteå stagger unsteadily on the ice.
“Now we will have people from many countries coming to the city. It’s just good for us. We welcome them and it is very important to show what we can offer. ”