Mr Paolo Cerruti,
Your company Northvolt has chosen to establish itself in Quebec. All in good time ! Welcome to our house. May “home” quickly become home for you too. This seems to be off to a good start since I heard you say that you and your family are already settled or about to settle in Montreal. Not only do you come from a Scandinavian country, but you bring with you to import an important element of this culture which over the years of sociological reflections has never ceased to fascinate me. That is to say, an eminent concern for the environment. We are made to get along.
Precisely because you bring a bit of Sweden with you, I would like to make a suggestion that would go in this direction. Your ambition is indeed to produce the greenest battery in the world. I heard you detail the small and big ways your company has chosen to get there. I’m adding one that will perhaps betray my incompetence in the next sentence, or at worst the next one.
Why wouldn’t you make Northvolt Quebec the only factory in the world that has a unit working on the development of a domestic battery, an emergency battery for power outages. A technology that would very advantageously replace the stinking and polluting gasoline generator and would also alleviate the deterioration of the climate. Not to mention the savings it would make on the costs of damage caused by these breakdowns. At the first stage, it would be a question of equipping families and individuals first, before businesses. If we are already capable of driving a car independently for more than 500 km, I do not see why we could not in the same way provide a house with the electricity of base to operate it for 24 or even 48 hours. Perhaps all this is just utopia generated by my ignorance of the matter.
But if it were possible, it would perhaps also be a way of calming the apprehensions aroused by your project among people who already live in the region, a way of clearing it of some of what remains less ecological. Further proof that Scandinavian culture is both progressive and avant-garde.
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