Norwegian battery start-up Freyr has announced its decision to accelerate its plans to invest in a U.S. plant in an effort to benefit from tax credits offered by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), CEO Tom Jensen confirmed.
Currently, Freyr is building two large battery plants, namely Giga Arctic in northern Norway and Giga America in the U.S. state of Georgia. While the construction of Giga America was initially anticipated to be 10-12 months behind Giga Arctic, the two are now being developed in parallel.
Jensen explained during an interview with Reuters that this is due to the benefits provided by the IRA. He explained that the legislation would enable Freyr to receive $37 million per gigawatt hour (GWh) of capacity installed in the United States.
“It’s important for us to be clear that we have a big ambition to complete Giga Arctic, but there are many other things we can use our capital on as well,” Jensen stated. “We have already had many of these developers approaching us, saying they can share some of their investment tax credits with us in order to secure batteries made in the U.S.”