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The Swedish company Northvolt, which intends to build an electric battery cell factory in Montérégie, assures that it “welcomes” the decision of the Legault government to subject its future recycling activities to the Evaluation and Assessment Procedure. examination of environmental impacts.
The company co-founded by industrialist Paolo Cerruti announced Friday morning in a press release that it was ready to present part of the complex to the BAPE which it intends to build in the coming years on the border of the municipalities of Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville.
This phase involves the construction of a materials recycling plant called “Revolt”. This will make it possible to [reduce] the demand for raw materials extracted from the ground and to manufacture batteries with 50% recycled materials in 2030, underlines the company. It will be submitted to the BAPE, revealed Radio-Canada on Friday.
The Northvolt recycling plant could generate more than 50,000 tonnes of products chemicals per year, which is beyond the threshold set by Quebec.
The other two phases of the project, which concerns the manufacturing of cathodes and the assembly of cells, should not be subject to an environmental assessment.
The battery sector
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The battery industry
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In theory, the Legault government could absolutely ask the BAPE to look at the entire project.
The Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, Benoit Charette, however indicated to Radio-Canada that he did not have the ;intention, arguing that none of his predecessors had ever availed themselves of this discretionary power before him.
Patrick Bonin, head of the Climate-Energy campaign for Greenpeace Canada, is disappointed.
It's completely distressing to hear the Minister of the Environment who, instead of defending the significant power he has to trigger a BAPE, [attempts] to justify the unjustifiable , or not to submit the entire project, which is the largest industrial project in the history of Quebec, to an evaluation, he protests.
It's a major project, and there, what we see, is a government which gives the impression of wanting to “bulldoze” this project
A quote from Patrick Bonin, head of the Climate-Energy campaign for Greenpeace Canada
Liberal environment critic Désirée MCGraw agrees. A BAPE is absolutely necessary for the entire project, especially for a new industry like the battery sector, she wrote on Friday on the X network.
Québec solidaire, for its part, believes that the minister's stubbornness is completely ridiculous. This demonstrates the little importance this government places on protecting the environment, underlined MP Alejandra Zaga Mendez in a statement sent to Radio-Canada.
Yves-François Blanchet calls for a real BAPE. I support the project, but without changing the rules or avoiding maneuvers, it must generate social acceptability, underlines the leader of the Bloc Québécois, who is also the MP for Beloeil–Chambly. The role of the BAPE is to define the conditions without delay, he adds.
In an interview with ICI RDI on Friday on the sidelines of an announcement in Shawinigan, the Minister of the Economy, Innovation and #x27;Energie, Pierre Fitzgibbon, was reassuring. Northvolt is a very environmentally responsible company, he certified, and an exemplary corporate citizen in Sweden, where it is based.
The minister, however, recognized that the BAPE study could perhaps delay the project a little.
