Governing the Green Transition : Northvolt in Skellefteå and the Critical Resources in the Swedish Green Transition

Sammanfattning

This thesis explores how the establishment of Northvolt’s battery factory in Skellefteå has influenced the municipality’s planning by focusing on the opportunities and challenges related to its recent changes in infrastructure, housing development, and social sustainability. The study also looks at how access to key resources and regional competition can be examined in the context of Sweden’s green transition. By combining document analysis with semi-structured interviews, I explore the opportunities and challenges that have emerged in infrastructure development, housing development, and social sustainability. Further, I also analyze how access to critical raw materials, and power dynamics in global supply chains have influenced Skellefteå’s development trajectory. The findings highlight how Skellefteå’s rapid transformation was guided by optimistic sociotechnical imaginaries, emphasizing industrial growth, job creation, and green leadership. However, these future-oriented visions often outpaced practical realities, leading to tensions as the accelerated industrial development clashed with the slower, more deliberate pace of strategic planning. At the time of writing, Northvolt filed for bankruptcy, adding a critical layer of context to the study. This development revealed the fragility of relying on a single company and underscored the municipality’s vulnerability to external market forces. Furthermore, the thesis shows how Sweden’s national strategy to reduce reliance on foreign critical raw materials – while aligned with broader EU goals – remains constrained by regulatory delays. By integrating resource dependency theory and sociotechnical imaginaries, the study reveals how imagined futures and resource dependencies shape both national policy and strategic planning. It concludes that effective governance of the green transition requires balancing visionary ambitions with grounded, diversified, and inclusive regional development strategies.