HYBRIT hailed one of UN Climate Summit's most ambitious initiatives

The companies behind the HYBRIT initiative are to join the Leadership Group for Industry Transition that was launched on Monday at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.

The aim of the Leadership Group is to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy in hard to abate sectors in accordance with the goals of Paris Agreement. During the launch, HYBRIT was hailed by Mr Löfven as one of the most ambitious and most transformative initiatives to tackle climate change.

Hybrit Development is a joint venture between the steel manufacturer SSAB, the mining company LKAB and the energy company Vattenfall. The objective of the joint-venture is to develop the world’s first fossil-free, ore-based steelmaking process. The project started during the spring of 2016 and the goal is to have an industrial process in place by 2035. The byproduct of using fossil-free electricity and hydrogen in steelmaking, instead of coke and coal, will be water instead of carbon dioxide.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres invited the world to a Climate Action Summit on 23 September to present concrete, realistic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. Sweden, together with India, has been commissioned to demonstrate the importance of the industry for the transition to a sustainable and fossil-free society.

Sweden and India co-launched the Leadership Group for Industry Transition as part of the UN summit's goals. The Group will work towards accelerating the transition of all industry sectors to low carbon pathways in line with the goals of Paris Agreement, while pursuing efforts to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

The Group's hopes that through supporting governments and industries in the transformation to a low-carbon economy, as well as by establishing an arena for innovation-sharing and public-private collaboration, it will help create the right conditions for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, whilst staying in line with the principles and provisions of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“The steel industry is seen as one of the “hard to abate” sectors, but we firmly believe that net-zero emissions is possible. That’s why we took the initiative to create HYBRIT. Fossil free steel has tremendous potential and could help many customer segments to truly become fossil-free. We believe that industry transition is positive both for the climate and for our industry’s competitiveness”, said Martin Lindqvist President and CEO SSAB.

“I think we can argue that HYBRIT is one of the most ambitious industrial transition projects globally today. All three companies have made commitments to be fossil-free by 2045, we have a concrete timetable and have, through HYBRIT, started construction and made investments to begin the transition. For us, as iron ore producers, HYBRIT is an essential part in creating a climate-neutral value chain from the rock to hot steel and we’re doing this with support from the Swedish government and together with academia”, says Jan Moström, President and CEO, LKAB.

“With HYBRIT and the Leadership Group we take the opportunity to be part of the transition and to work on solutions for the most important challenge of our time. Together we want to inspire others to collaborate across organisational borders as real change and new business opportunities require a fossil-free value chain approach”, says President and CEO of Vattenfall, Magnus Hall.

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