By using fossil-free electricity and hydrogen instead of coke and carbon for iron ore reduction, the byproduct will be normal water instead of carbon dioxide.
HYBRIT’s owners SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall welcome the higher ambitions to reach climate targets discussed at the COP25 climate summit in Madrid. The companies cite the need for powerful measures to secure the industrial transition. The HYBRIT initiative for fossil-free steel production shows that zero net emissions is possible.
At Monday’s meeting of the Leadership Group for Industry Transition, SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall jointly highlighted a number of conditions needed, both within the EU and globally, to rapidly decarbonize industry worldwide.
The three companies were invited to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York in September to participate in the Leadership Group for Industry Transition, with the aim of converting even the hard to abate industries such as steel and cement. The Leadership Group is one of the UN climate tracks initiated by the governments of Sweden and India.
“We welcome further concrete steps to reach global climate targets. The EU has an opportunity to lead the industrial transition. A European Green Deal must include an ambitious Industrial strategy that focuses on innovation, supports the upscaling of new technologies, and facilitates access to private and public funding. It should also emphasize creating markets for low carbon products, for example through an effective ETS system, and facilitate the necessary infrastructure for fossil-free electricity and hydrogen,” says Martin Pei, CTO of SSAB and Chairman of HYBRIT.
“Our goal is to create a completely fossil-free value chain, from the mine to the finished steel product. The fossil-free steel industry has the potential to reduce the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions by 7 percent, and the transition is a necessity if we are to meet our shared climate goals,” says Jan Moström, President and CEO of LKAB.
“Continued sufficient access to fossil-free electricity with high delivery reliability and competitive pricing, as well as initiatives for better flexibility, are needed to enable the industrial transition globally. The HYBRIT project´s objective of storing hydrogen also contributes to increased flexibility by using storage to balance and stabilize the energy system,” says Cecilia Hellner, Head of Public and Regulatory Affairs Sweden at Vattenfall.
The three companies are represented at COP25 by Martin Pei (SSAB), Jan Moström (LKAB) and Cecilia Hellner (Vattenfall), among others.
Hybrit Development AB is a joint venture of SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall with the aim of advancing HYBRIT technology from laboratory scale to full production scale to enable the world’s first fossil-free ore-based steelmaking. By using fossil-free electricity and hydrogen instead of coke and carbon for iron ore reduction, the byproduct will be normal water instead of carbon dioxide.
At Luleå in northern Sweden, HYBRIT is now building the world’s first pilot plant based on direct reduction of iron ore with hydrogen, which will be ready in 2020. SSAB´s goal is a market launch of the first fossil-free steel products in 2026.
Read the most up to date Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Industry news at FuelCellsWorks
