The steel group SSAB, the mining company LKAB and the energy company Vattenfall have a long-standing collaboration in order to be able to produce steel in 2035 without emitting any carbon dioxide. This would reduce Sweden's total carbon dioxide emissions by ten percent.
The project, Hybrit, was recently presented at the UN Climate Summit in New York.
But it is a long way to go and several pilot projects are underway or planned. An investment of SEK 200 million, 150 from Hybrit and 50 million from the Swedish Energy Agency, is now being launched in a pilot plant for the storage of fossil-free hydrogen in Luleå, in connection with SSAB's experimental plant.
In operation between 2022 and 2024The warehouse should be in operation between 2022 and 2024 and then be decommissioned.
Hydrogen should be used for fossil-free energy production. By using the gas storage, it is possible to balance the electricity system with other weather-dependent electricity production, is the idea.
"Large-scale hydrogen storage will be an important puzzle piece for a fossil-free value chain for steel production, but also in a future electricity system with an increasing share of weather-dependent renewable power," the Swedish Energy Agency's Director General Robert Andrén writes in a press release.