Swedish metal is taken into account the world’s hardest. It might quickly develop into its greenest. In Boden, a city close to the Arctic Circle, a startup referred to as h2 Green Steel (h2gs) is erecting a €4bn ($4bn) new mill, Europe’s first in almost half a century. It will probably be powered not by the same old coal or pure gasoline however by inexperienced hydrogen, produced on web site by the area’s considerable wind and hydropower. When totally inbuilt just a few years, it should make use of as much as 1,800 folks and churn out 5m tonnes of metal yearly.
The undertaking issues far past sparsely populated northern Sweden. The penalties might be momentous for the continent’s producers of metal and different fundamental supplies, akin to cement and chemical substances, which between the three of them instantly contribute round 1% of the eu’s gdp. It would ripple by the provision chains of companies, from carmakers to builders, which account for an additional 14% of eu output, in line with Material Economics, a think-tank. It would increase Europe’s vitality independence, the significance of which has been laid naked by Russia’s vitality blackmail in response to Western sanctions in opposition to its conflict in Ukraine. And it might be a boon for the local weather, since basic-materials industries spew out a few fifth of Europe’s greenhouse-gas emissions. It may in brief, thinks Ann Mettler of Breakthrough Energy, a venture-capital fund backed by Bill Gates, mark the rebirth of Europe’s heavy {industry} for the post-fossil-fuel period.
Heavy {industry} has lengthy appeared irredeemably carbon-intensive. Reducing iron ore to make metal, heating limestone to provide cement and utilizing steam to crack hydrocarbons into their element molecules requires quite a lot of vitality. On high of that, the chemical processes concerned give off a lot of further carbon dioxide. Cutting all these emissions, specialists believed, was both technically unfeasible or prohibitively costly.
Both the economics and the expertise are finally beginning to look extra beneficial. Europe is introducing harder emissions targets, carbon costs are rising and customers are exhibiting a higher willingness to pay extra for greener merchandise. Several European nations have crafted methods for hydrogen, probably the most promising substitute for fossil fuels in lots of industrial processes. Germany is launching the Hydrogen Intermediary Network Company (trace.co for brief), a world buying and selling hub for hydrogen and hydrogen-derived merchandise. Most necessary, low-carbon applied sciences are lastly coming of age. The want for a lot of firms to replenish their ageing belongings gives a “fast-forward mechanism”, says Per-Anders Enkvist of Material Economics.
Taken collectively, these developments are permitting European industrial companies which have vowed to develop into carbon-neutral by 2050, which is to say a lot of them, to begin placing cash the place their mouth is. Material Economics has recognized 70 tasks in Europe which are commercialising expertise to scale back carbon emissions in basic-materials industries. Scarcely every week goes by with out the revealing of a brand new enterprise. Decarbonising {industry} has turned from mission inconceivable to “mission possible”, says Adair Turner of the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank.
The metal {industry} is the furthest alongside. h2gs’s mill in Boden is cleverly combining confirmed applied sciences at an enormous scale. The agency is constructing one of many world’s largest electrolysis vegetation to provide hydrogen. The gasoline is then pumped right into a reactor, the place it powers a course of referred to as “direct reduction”: beneath nice warmth, it snatches oxygen from iron ore, producing nothing however water and sponge iron. This materials, so referred to as as a result of its floor is riddled with holes, is then refined into metal utilizing an electric-arc furnace, which dispenses with coking coal.
A half-hour drive south of Boden, hybrit—a three way partnership between ssab, a steelmaker, Vattenfall, an influence utility, and lkab, an iron-ore producer—is piloting an analogous course of. In July the board of Salzgitter, a German metal firm, gave the inexperienced mild to a €723m undertaking referred to as salcos that can swap its typical blast furnaces for direct-reduction vegetation by 2033 (it should use some pure gasoline till it may possibly safe sufficient hydrogen). Other large European metal producers, together with ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp, have related plans.
Cement-makers are heading in the identical route, albeit extra slowly. Since heating limestone generates about 60% of the sector’s carbon emissions and a substitute expertise, akin to direct discount in steelmaking, is missing, the {industry} is mainly specializing in abating emissions after the actual fact, utilizing carbon seize and storage (ccs). Many companies are experimenting with a heating course of that replaces air with pure oxygen, which produces CO2 appropriate for sequestration. Some are attempting to make use of electrical energy reasonably than fossil fuels to warmth the limestone. The most bold are growing new, lower-carbon kinds of cement.
HeidelbergCement, the world’s fourth-largest producer of the stuff, has launched half a dozen low-carbon tasks in Europe. They embrace a ccs facility within the Norwegian metropolis of Brevik and the world’s first carbon-neutral cement plant on the Swedish island of Gotland. Ecocem, an Irish startup, is making cement that makes use of much less clinker, the intermediate materials derived from the heated limestone, and thus emits much less carbon. Some firms are attempting to retrieve cement from outdated concrete in demolished buildings.
The chemical substances {industry} faces maybe the most important problem. Although powering steam crackers with electrical energy as a substitute of pure gasoline is easy in precept, it’s no cakewalk in apply, given the restricted provide of low-carbon electrical energy. Moreover, the chemical substances enterprise breathes hydrocarbons, from which a lot of its 30,000 or so merchandise are derived.
Even so, it isn’t giving up. basf, a chemical substances colossus, is working with two rivals, sabic and Linde, to develop an electrically heated steam cracker for its town-sized manufacturing facility in Ludwigshafen. It desires to make its web site in Antwerp, which emitted 3.8m tonnes of CO2 final yr, net-zero by 2030. To obtain this objective, basf just lately purchased a part of a wind farm off the Dutch coast to supply it with carbon-free electrical energy. The firm is, like its cement counterparts, additionally taking a critical have a look at recycling, specifically a course of referred to as pyrolysis, the place plastic waste is burned within the absence of oxygen and break up into its hydrocarbon elements. Other companies are dreaming up various kinds of greener feedstocks. afyrem, a French startup, is deriving hydrocarbons from biomass.
Several dozen pilot tasks—even massive ones with confirmed expertise—don’t quantity to a inexperienced transition. The exhausting half is scaling them up. The essential infrastructure is both a piece in progress (clean-electricity technology) or scarcely exists (hydrogen manufacturing and distribution). Costs stay excessive: inexperienced steelworks are nonetheless two to a few instances dearer to construct than the standard variety. Attracting employees may be tough, particularly to renewables-rich locations which are sometimes, like Boden, distant. And rivals in different nations aren’t standing nonetheless; a few big Indian conglomerates specifically are betting large on inexperienced hydrogen. Europe must hurry up whether it is to take care of its lead, warns Frank Peter of Agora Energiewende, a think-tank.
All these are actual obstacles. But they needn’t be insurmountable ones. To perceive why, as soon as once more think about h2gs. It has satisfied companies together with bmw, a carmaker, and two white-goods producers, Electrolux and Miele, to signal contracts for 1.5m tonnes of inexperienced metal. That order guide serves as collateral for banks to finance two-thirds of the undertaking (with the remainder coming from fairness investments by backers together with venture-capital companies and industrial giants akin to Scania and Mercedes-Benz).
To entice a whole bunch of expert employees and their households to distant Boden, in the meantime, it should assist them discover housing in a fancy that can, if its architects have their approach, resemble a snazzy resort. To safe the opposite necessary enter, hydrogen, h2gs has teamed up with Iberdrola, a Spanish vitality agency, to construct a big manufacturing facility in Western Europe to provide the gasoline, with a view to supplying a few of it to different industrial customers.
h2gs’s considering is that if can set up its metal and hydrogen platforms early, it may possibly lock in necessary benefits forward of rivals elsewhere. These embrace issues like setting requirements and grabbing a slice of probably profitable companies akin to software program to manage hydrogen- and steelmaking gear. For Europe to develop into a green-industry superpower, its governments and industrial giants might want to show related ingenuity and ambition. ■