Swedish metal is taken into account the world’s hardest. It could quickly turn into its greenest. In Boden, a city close to the Arctic Circle, a startup referred to as h2 Inexperienced Metal (h2gs) is erecting a €4bn ($4bn) new mill, Europe’s first in almost half a century. 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 plentiful wind and hydropower. When absolutely inbuilt a number of years, it would make use of as much as 1,800 folks and churn out 5m tonnes of metal yearly.
The challenge issues far past sparsely populated northern Sweden. The implications may very well 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 straight contribute round 1% of the eu’s gdp. It could ripple by means of the provision chains of corporations, from carmakers to builders, which account for an additional 14% of eu output, in accordance with Materials Economics, a think-tank. It could increase Europe’s vitality independence, the significance of which has been laid naked by Russia’s vitality blackmail in response to Western sanctions towards its struggle in Ukraine. And it could be a boon for the local weather, since basic-materials industries spew out a couple of fifth of Europe’s greenhouse-gas emissions. It may in brief, thinks Ann Mettler of Breakthrough Power, a venture-capital fund backed by Invoice Gates, mark the rebirth of Europe’s heavy {industry} for the post-fossil-fuel period.
Heavy {industry} has lengthy appeared irredeemably carbon-intensive. Decreasing iron ore to make metal, heating limestone to supply cement and utilizing steam to crack hydrocarbons into their element molecules requires a number of vitality. On high of that, the chemical processes concerned give off plenty of further carbon dioxide. Reducing all these emissions, specialists believed, was both technically unfeasible or prohibitively costly.
Each the economics and the know-how are finally beginning to look extra beneficial. Europe is introducing harder emissions targets, carbon costs are rising and shoppers are exhibiting a higher willingness to pay extra for greener merchandise. A number of European international locations have crafted methods for hydrogen, essentially the most promising alternative for fossil fuels in lots of industrial processes. Germany is launching the Hydrogen Middleman Community Firm (trace.co for brief), a worldwide buying and selling hub for hydrogen and hydrogen-derived merchandise. Most vital, low-carbon applied sciences are lastly coming of age. The necessity for a lot of firms to replenish their ageing property presents a “fast-forward mechanism”, says Per-Anders Enkvist of Materials Economics.
Taken collectively, these developments are permitting European industrial corporations which have vowed to turn into carbon-neutral by 2050, which is to say a lot of them, to begin placing cash the place their mouth is. Materials Economics has recognized 70 initiatives in Europe which can be commercialising know-how to cut back carbon emissions in basic-materials industries. Scarcely per week goes by with out the disclosing of a brand new enterprise. Decarbonising {industry} has turned from mission inconceivable to “mission doable”, says Adair Turner of the Power Transitions Fee, a think-tank.
The metal {industry} is the furthest alongside. h2gs’s mill in Boden is cleverly combining confirmed applied sciences at a giant scale. The agency is constructing one of many world’s largest electrolysis crops to supply hydrogen. The gasoline is then pumped right into a reactor, the place it powers a course of referred to as “direct discount”: below 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 the same course of. In July the board of Salzgitter, a German metal firm, gave the inexperienced gentle to a €723m challenge referred to as salcos that may swap its standard blast furnaces for direct-reduction crops by 2033 (it would use some pure gasoline till it may safe sufficient hydrogen). Different huge European metal producers, together with ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp, have related plans.
Cement-makers are heading in the identical path, albeit extra slowly. Since heating limestone generates about 60% of the sector’s carbon emissions and a alternative know-how, 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 corporations are experimenting with a heating course of that replaces air with pure oxygen, which produces CO2 appropriate for sequestration. Some try to make use of electrical energy moderately than fossil fuels to warmth the limestone. Essentially the most formidable 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 initiatives 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 try to retrieve cement from outdated concrete in demolished buildings.
The chemical substances {industry} faces maybe the largest problem. Though powering steam crackers with electrical energy as an alternative of pure gasoline is simple in precept, it’s no cakewalk in follow, given the restricted provide of low-carbon electrical energy. Furthermore, the chemical substances enterprise breathes hydrocarbons, from which a lot of its 30,000 or so merchandise are derived.
Even so, it’s not 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 needs to make its web site in Antwerp, which emitted 3.8m tonnes of CO2 final 12 months, net-zero by 2030. To realize this objective, basf not too long ago purchased a part of a wind farm off the Dutch coast to offer it with carbon-free electrical energy. The corporate is, like its cement counterparts, additionally taking a critical have a look at recycling, particularly a course of referred to as pyrolysis, the place plastic waste is burned within the absence of oxygen and cut up into its hydrocarbon elements. Different corporations are dreaming up several types of greener feedstocks. afyrem, a French startup, is deriving hydrocarbons from biomass.
A number of dozen pilot initiatives—even massive ones with confirmed know-how—don’t quantity to a inexperienced transition. The arduous half is scaling them up. The mandatory infrastructure is both a piece in progress (clean-electricity era) or scarcely exists (hydrogen manufacturing and distribution). Prices stay excessive: inexperienced steelworks are nonetheless two to 3 occasions dearer to construct than the traditional sort. Attracting staff could be tough, particularly to renewables-rich locations which are sometimes, like Boden, distant. And rivals in different international locations aren’t standing nonetheless; a few large Indian conglomerates particularly are betting huge 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. However they needn’t be insurmountable ones. To know why, as soon as once more contemplate h2gs. It has satisfied corporations 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 e-book serves as collateral for banks to finance two-thirds of the challenge (with the remaining coming from fairness investments by backers together with venture-capital corporations and industrial giants akin to Scania and Mercedes-Benz).
To draw a whole bunch of expert staff and their households to distant Boden, in the meantime, it would assist them discover housing in a posh that may, if its architects have their approach, resemble a snazzy resort. To safe the opposite vital enter, hydrogen, h2gs has teamed up with Iberdrola, a Spanish vitality agency, to construct a big manufacturing facility in Western Europe to supply 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 lock in vital 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 tools. For Europe to turn into a green-industry superpower, its governments and industrial giants might want to show related ingenuity and ambition. ■