German steelmaker Salzgitter wants to end the use of blast furnaces and switch to low-emissions technologies by the middle of the next decade, the company's CEO has said.
Steelmaking. Credit: Salzgitter
Credit: Salzgitter
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gunnar Groebler said that doing so would mean a 95% reduction in CO2 emissions from steel production - equivalent to around 8 million tonnes per year.
Read more: New German government accelerates transition, vows to ban coal by 2030
He added that restructuring the group's entire production method would require an investment of €3-4 billion and that he expected government support.
Gunnar Groebler. Credit: Vattenfall
Gunnar Groebler has been CEO at Salzgitter since July 2021. He was previously Senior Vice President of Vattenfall's wind energy arm. Credit: Vattenfall
Salzgitter is Germany's second-largest steel producer, accounting for 1% of the country's total CO2 emissions.
Groebler said that he hopes the new coalition government in Berlin would support the transformation of the steel sector, which produces 6% of Germany's emissions overall.
The global steel industry is one of the world's largest emitters and is considered one of the harder-to-abate sectors. At present, steel production relies heavily on coking coal to smelt iron ore, making emissions unavoidable.
There are, however, a number of green steel producers emerging across the continent that use hydrogen in the smelting process including HYBRIT and H2 Green Steel in Sweden, and Primetal's HYFOR project in Austria.
He also urged for a fast pace of change, and pointed to the bureaucratic hurdles and perceived lack of political will that has hampered the offshore wind sector in the North Sea. He pointed out that not a single wind turbine had been installed there in 2021.
Read more: Steeling the future: Using hydrogen to make green steel
"That's not due to a lack of investors. It's about an over-regulated auction system and a lack of permits, i.e. the political will. We can't afford another year lost like that," said Groebler.
The new German government headed by Olaf Scholz has made the decarbonisation of the country's heavy industry a priority in its push for climate neutrality by 2045.
Plans include the use of carbon contracts for difference (CCfDs), a strategy against carbon leakage and the introduction of an EU-wide carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
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