IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/ax56z_v1.html

The Emperor has No Batteries: Europe’s Uneven Bid for Battery Strategic Autonomy

Author

Listed:
  • Ban, Cornel
  • Liu, Imogen T.

Abstract

Why did Sweden’s Northvolt—Europe’s most celebrated green industrial startup—collapse, while France managed to stabilise its local aspiring champions in the same cleantech sector? This paper uses these contrasting trajectories to interrogate the EU’s more assertive industrial policy turn. Drawing on the developmental network state (DNS) framework, we argue that while the EU has shifted from market neutrality to vertical industrial policy activism in a global context marked by geopolitical competition, its capacity to sustain strategic firms through crises remains underdeveloped. However, domestic capabilities and strategies mediated EU resourcing, brokering, facilitation, and protection, the main functions of the DNS. Where Sweden lacked credible financial, fiscal and institutional mechanisms of internal protection for the beleaguered Northvolt, France deployed a more robust economic statecraft toolkit, combining strategic finance, firm-level coordination, and public investment. Northvolt’s collapse illustrates the limits of Europe’s institutional orchestration of ambitious industrial policies: a regime that can incubate innovation but cannot stabilise it commercially. We conclude that without repurposed macro-financial institutions, Europe’s role as a competitive supplier of decarbonisation technologies will remain vulnerable.

Suggested Citation

  • Ban, Cornel & Liu, Imogen T., 2025. "The Emperor has No Batteries: Europe’s Uneven Bid for Battery Strategic Autonomy," SocArXiv ax56z_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:ax56z_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ax56z_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/68e528b7401d681055e478cd/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/ax56z_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben Clift, 2012. "Comparative Capitalisms, Ideational Political Economy and French Post- Dirigiste Responses to the Global Financial Crisis," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(5), pages 565-590, November.
    2. Edquist, Harald & Henrekson, Magnus, 2017. "Do R&D and ICT affect total factor productivity growth differently?," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 106-119.
    3. Ha‐Joon Chang & Antonio Andreoni, 2020. "Industrial Policy in the 21st Century," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 51(2), pages 324-351, March.
    4. Cornel Ban, 2013. "Brazil's liberal neo-developmentalism: New paradigm or edited orthodoxy?," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 298-331, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gutberlet, Melissa & Preuss, Lutz & Thorpe, Andrea Stevenson, 2023. "Macro level matters: Advancing circular economy in different business systems within Europe," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    2. Alje van Dam & Koen Frenken, 2020. "Vertical vs. Horizontal Policy in a Capabilities Model of Economic Development," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2037, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Aug 2020.
    3. Ha-Joon Chang & Antonio Andreoni, 2021. "Bringing Production Back into Development: An introduction," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(2), pages 165-178, April.
    4. Nur Amira Zainul Armir & Sarani Zakaria & Rawshan Ara Begum & Noratiqah Mohd Ariff & Norshamliza Chamhuri & Jalaluddin Harun & Noorlaila Mohd Talib & Mohd Amin Kadir, 2022. "Factors affecting industrial localization of timber mills in Peninsular Malaysia by econometric and spatial analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 7833-7850, June.
    5. Ali Burak Güven, 2016. "Rethinking Development Space in Emerging Countries: Turkey's Conservative Countermovement," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(5), pages 995-1024, September.
    6. Antonio Andreoni & Ha-Joon Chang & Isabel Estevez, 2021. "The Missing Dimensions of the Human Capabilities Approach: Collective and Productive," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(2), pages 179-205, April.
    7. Salih I. Bora, 2023. "‘A Sovereign Europe’? Strategic Use of Discourse at the Service of French Economic Interests in EU Politics (2017–2022)," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(5), pages 1281-1297, September.
    8. Andreoni, Antonio & Tregenna, Fiona, 2020. "Escaping the middle-income technology trap: A comparative analysis of industrial policies in China, Brazil and South Africa," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 324-340.
    9. Edquist, Harald, 2022. "The economic impact of mobile broadband speed," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(5).
    10. Beatrice Negro & Giovanni Dosi & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2024. "The hydrogen paradigms. Technologies, country patterns of specialisation and dependence," LEM Papers Series 2024/33, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    11. Sanghamitra Chakravarty & Georgina Mercedes Gómez, 2024. "A Development Lens to Frugal Innovation: Bringing Back Production and Technological Capabilities into the Discourse," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(1), pages 82-101, February.
    12. Chwieroth, Jeffrey M. & Walter, Andrew, 2022. "Neoliberalism and banking crisis bailouts: distant enemies or warring neighbors?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111871, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Riccardo Pariboni & Pasquale Tridico, 2020. "Structural change, institutions and the dynamics of labor productivity in Europe," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 30(5), pages 1275-1300, November.
    14. Steve Rolf & Seth Schindler, 2023. "The US–China rivalry and the emergence of state platform capitalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(5), pages 1255-1280, August.
    15. Shen, Wei & Ayele, Seife & Worako, Tadesse Kuma, 2023. "The political economy of green industrial policy in Africa: Unpacking the coordination challenges in Ethiopia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    16. James Wood & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2020. "House prices, private debt and the macroeconomics of comparative political economy," Working Papers PKWP2005, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    17. DeMartino, George & Grabel, Ilene & Scoones, Ian, 2024. "Economics for an uncertain world," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    18. repec:agg:journl:3393 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Egger, Peter H. & Strecker, Nora M. & Zoller-Rydzek, Benedikt, 2020. "Estimating bargaining-related tax advantages of multinational firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    20. Alicja Paulina Krubnik, 2025. "From Subordination to Transformation? Multilateral Debt Dynamics and Green Development in Ecuador," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 68(3), pages 279-291, December.
    21. Clara Turner & Marco R Di Tommaso & Chiara Pollio & Karen Chapple, 2020. "Who will win the electric vehicle race? The role of place-based assets and policy," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 35(4), pages 337-362, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:ax56z_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.