Iron and steel production are two of the most carbon-heavy industries, but efforts to make these materials without fossil fuels are finally gathering momentum. A company in Sweden called H2 Green Steel says it will start producing green steel commercially in late 2025, and it is just one of several working on this.
鈥淚f you really want to make an impact, you should start with decarbonising steel,鈥� Lina Ha虋kansdotter of told a press briefing in Stockholm on 22 June.
That is because, as Ha虋kansdotter pointed out, iron and steel manufacturing produce around 7 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. This means decarbonising iron and steel production is crucial if we are to get anywhere near net zero 鈥� but so far near-zero progress has been made.
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In 2021, another Swedish company called , part-owned by , said it had made the world鈥檚 first fossil fuel-free steel. But this was a tiny trial run. Hybrit isn鈥檛 close to commercial production 鈥� it is only building a demonstration plant due to start operating in 2026.
The reason why iron and steel-making are hard-to-tackle sources of emissions is that fossil fuels don鈥檛 just power the process, they are part of it. Iron ore consists of iron oxides that are 鈥渞educed鈥� by reacting them with carbon in a furnace, producing iron plus carbon dioxide.
Up until the 17th century, all iron was made with charcoal because the impurities in coal weaken the metal. But with the invention of coking to purify it, coal could be used instead, sparking the industrial revolution.
Steel can be recycled in electric arc furnaces, but most factories that make it from iron ore still use coal, resulting in emissions of more than 2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel. The greenest alternative is to use hydrogen to reduce the iron ore to iron, producing only water as a byproduct.
This process isn鈥檛 entirely new 鈥� a few factories already reduce iron ore with hydrogen and carbon monoxide derived from natural gas. But using natural gas still produces around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel.
Hybrit, H2 Green Steel and a few other companies instead plan to use electrolysers to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable or low-carbon electricity. H2 Green Steel says its process will produce less than 0.2 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of steel and it aims to leapfrog its competitors by building a 700-megawatt electrolyser, which it says will be the biggest in Europe. In June, it got the go-ahead to build its planned factory in Boden in northern Sweden.
So, we could soon see green steel being produced at a commercial scale. But the that H2 Green Steel aims to make is a tiny fraction of the .
To make that much steel without fossil fuels will require according to a 2022 report, which is a staggering two-thirds of all the renewable capacity that currently exists globally. That is an enormous challenge.
Michael Le Page鈥檚 trip to Stockholm was paid for by Vargas, the parent company of H2 Green Steel
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