Northvolt expands battery factories: Swedish electric battery maker Northvolt has secured USD 5 bn — Europe’s largest green loan — to fund a factory expansion in Sweden, Reuters reports. This latest financing brings the company’s total debt and equity financing up to over USD 13 bn, which will fuel expansion plans in Sweden, Poland, Germany, the United States, and Canada. The debt — including the refinancing of a USD 1.6 bn package from 2020 — is provided by a consortium of 23 commercial banks, along with the European Investment Bank and the Nordic Investment Bank.

Northvolt has been raking it in: The company raised USD 1.2 bn last August from international investors — including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs — and Canadian pension funds in preparation for expanding in Europe and North America.

Vestas' wind operations are getting greener: Danish wind turbine maker Vestas is partnering with European steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal to use recycled steel in Vestas’ wind turbine towers, Bloomberg writes. The new turbines — which will reduce emissions by 66% compared to common ones — will account for two-thirds of the 76 turbines to be installed in the Baltic Power farm next year. The greener steel can cut emissions by 25% if used in the top two parts of offshore towers, and even more for those that are onshore, where it can make up the entire tower structure. Vestas is currently building Egypt's Gulf of Suez wind farm.

Not the only efforts to green the turbine industry: Spanish renewables giant Iberdrola, which co-owns East Anglia 3 and Baltic Eagle wind farms with the UAE's Masdar, is reassembling and reusing using old blades and building a turbine blade recycling plant to recover the materials for use in different fields including energy and construction. France's Veolia is also on the same path, partnering with GE Renewable Energy to recycle blades.

OTHER STORIES WORTH KNOWING ABOUT THIS MORNING-

  • Japan to release more Fukushima wastewater: The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is planning to release a fourth batch of treated radioactive water sourced from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant next month. Despite objections from China, Japan started discharging the wastewater in August, starting with around 8k tons out of the 1.34 mn tons of accumulated wastewater. (Reuters)
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