Our Impact on the Environment
Circularity, Energy, and Water - Pollution, Deforestation, and Biodiversity.
Building a Sustainable Future: FREYR's Approach to Circularity
A critical aspect of a sustainable industry is to strive for circularity throughout the entire value chain. This can be accomplished in two ways:
1. Circular product design: FREYR aims to integrate circularity into its R&D activities both in process- and product design at cell and module level.
2. Circular partnerships: Scrap generated during production can be recycled to recover valuable materials.
Energy
FREYR’s long-term ambition is to use renewable energy in our production – and over time this may include our supply chain.
As the world transitions to renewable energy, renewable energy resource will be very valuable, and we all have a shared responsibility to use it effectively and in the most value-creating way. We aim to monitor and report on our energy use in production continuously. As we gain experience with our technology, we plan to set targets for energy consumption.
Water and Pollution
Manufacturing of solar cells is a water-intensive process. FREYR plans to collect data on the water usage across our value chain and map this against local and regional water stress levels today and routinely over the life of our facilities. To do so we plan to use global databases and consult with third party water experts.
Through our value chain from the mining of minerals, processing these minerals and manufacturing of solar cells modules then solar cells, we expect there will be emissions of gasses and fluids as well as solid waste. We will strive to contain all of these in our own cell production in such a way that there is minimal harm done to the environment or people and work closely with local and national governments to make sure we follow all relevant laws and support the development of technologies to create new and better solutions. Also, in our work with our suppliers and their sub-suppliers, we plan to map what the emissions are from their processes and how these are managed with the aim of running sustainable operations.
Deforestation and Biodiversity
Inherent in the extraction and use of resources such as minerals, and in the construction of factories there is impact on natural resources. These impacts can include deforestation, loss of local biodiversity, and other local environmental issues. FREYR’s approach will be to balance between developing and protecting natural resources according to local and international laws, science and technology developments as well as local stakeholder’s recommendations.
We are particularly proud that our first asset build our Mo i Rana Customer Qualification Plant inside a pre-existing building. See more here about the Customer Qualification Plant (CQP) in Mo. Our Giga Arctic building is also built on a brownfield site within an existing industrial area that is regulated as a manufacturing site and will have no new impacts on forestation or biodiversity.
For our solar cell module factory, we are taking over the lease on an existing building. When selecting site for production plant in the future impact on natur and natural resources will be part of the decision criteria.