The European Commission announced Monday that it had approved German state aid to allow Northvolt to build a gigafactory producing battery cells used in electric vehicles (EVs) in the town of Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, in an investment worth €2.5 billion. It is the first time the bloc makes use of ‘matching aid’, an exceptional measure adopted in March to allow EU states to provide higher amounts of aid to companies when there is a risk of investment being diverted from Europe. Without the move, Northvolt would have moved its investment to the US to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act (IR…