Nordic steelmakers: Low-carbon projects and clarity on green steel definition
Photo: SSAB Fossilfree steelproduction
Nordic steelmakers are gearing up with their low-carbon projects to achieve net zero while demand for green steel is increasing as end-users want to cut their emissions, market participants said at a EUROMETAL Nordics event held in Oslo on June 4. Participants also sought clarity over the definition of green steel. Published in EUROMETAL 7th June, approved published by SSAB Norway.
“Demand for low-carbon steel is going to increase higher in the years ahead,” Matts Nilsson, Head of Sales Sweden and Norway for SSAB, said during the panel discussion echoing the sentiment of other panelists.
Sarah Milne, H2Green Steel sales manager, said: “I think this is the most exciting time to be in our industry as we are going through an epochal change.”
“Last year, we put out as a world, 37 billion mt of CO2 in the atmosphere, of which 8% of that was because of the products that we produce. We can’t carry on the way as we are making steel today. We have to change,” Milne said.
Europe aims to cut carbon emissions by 55% compared with 1990 levels by 2030 and aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. To achieve these targets, European steelmakers are switching technologies; there are around 60 projects that have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 81.5 million mt/year by 2030, of which the most innovative projects are based in the Nordics, given the large quantity of hydrogen.
According to worldsteel data from 2022, on average, every metric ton of steel produced leads to 1.91 mt of CO2 in emission. The carbon intensity changes depending on the route and raw materials used to produce steel.
In Europe, just over 40% of EU steel is produced via the electric arc furnace production process with blast furnace producers that are now mostly changing to the EAF-DRI process. As underlined by panelists at the event, it is not possible to produce steel just with scrap as all the scrap in the world can cover only 30% of the total world capacity, so new breakthrough technologies are needed, similar to the one that H2 Green Steel and Hybrit are using in the Nordics.
Milne said they have sold already half of their future volume production in pre-taken binding agreement and have managed to raise a total of Eur6.5 billion, which is the biggest project funding raised during 2023. “We see more and more demand for low-carbon products; we expected [in] the automotive sector, but now we can see all other sectors are following,” Milne added.
Milne said H2 Green Steel is on track to start its low-carbon production by 2026. The Boden plant will have a 1-GW electrolyze to produce hydrogen for direct-reduced iron produced from renewable electricity — rather than coal — emitting as much as 95% less CO2 in comparison with the steel produced via traditional BF technology in two phases, for a total capacity of 5 million mt of steel.
Steelmaker SSAB said their works to cut emissions were moving forward. “At the beginning of April, SSAB took the decision to invest Eur4.5 billion in a steel mini-mill in Lulea that will cut Sweden’s CO2 emissions by 7%, in addition to the 3% reduction from the conversion of the mill in Oxelosund, which is also progressing well,” Nilsson said, adding that the company will have to take the decision to convert also its BF in Raahe.
SSAB has already a low-carbon steel product — SSAB zero — which comes with a premium, and it will be replaced by fossil free steel by 2030, using scrap and fossil free iron as raw materials once the transformation of all of its sites is completed.
Panelists agreed that even as steelmakers are working to produce a green product, there is a need for the definition of “green steel,” which is key to working with transparency.
“We need an industry definition of what is green, we are all talking about the same thing but slightly differently. How we measure the CO2 is very important, we will see different shades of green,” Milne said, adding that it will probably be more expensive to reduce carbon content 90%-95%.
Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, launched its carbon-accounted price assessments in May 2023 following the increase in market demand for low-carbon steel products and transparency.
Platts last assessed Northwest European hot-rolled carbon-accounted coil stable on the day at Eur755/mt ($820.4585/mt) ex-works Ruhr June 5.
The assessment was calculated in line with the sum of Platts daily carbon-accounted steel premium (CASP) assessment and Platts daily hot-rolled coil price assessment in Northwest Europe.
Annalisa Villa