Green hydrogen enables the decarbonization of steel production
By powering the transition to fossil-free industries, green hydrogen plays a key role in fighting climate change. At Stegra, we will use green hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-abate industries – starting with steel, which accounts for 25 percent of Europe’s industrial emissions. To enable this, our plant in Boden, northern Sweden, will feature one of the world’s largest electrolyzers.
Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in a process known as electrolysis. We are building a giga-scale electrolyzer facility, powered by renewable electricity, as an integrated part of our steel plant. There, we will produce the green hydrogen needed to bring 5 million tonnes of high-quality green steel to the market by 2030, with a gradual ramp-up starting in 2026. The main application for our green hydrogen will be to reduce iron ore pellets to direct-reduced iron, or DRI (also called sponge iron). By using green hydrogen instead of coal, we can reduce CO2 emissions from the ironmaking process by up to 95 percent.
So, how does it all work?
In traditional steelmaking, iron ore reduction is done by heating it together with coke, a carbon-rich fuel made from coal. In a chemical reaction, the oxygen in the iron ore bonds with carbon present in the coke, forming and emitting CO2. In our process, the oxygen in the ore instead bonds with hydrogen, producing water as a byproduct and at the same time making the iron ready for use in steelmaking. Large-scale green hydrogen production will enable the transition of hard-to-abate industries towards sustainable operations. And as a front-runner, Stegra is playing an important part in accelerating decarbonization.