German Government to Part Fund ArcelorMittal’s Hydrogen DRI Plant
By Strategic Research Institute on Sep 08, 2021 09:33 am
During a visit to ArcelorMittal Germany’s steel plant in Hamburg, Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze pledged the Federal Government’s support for the construction of Germany’s first industrial scale hydrogen-based direct reduced iron plant. The Federal Government has expressed its intention to provide EUR 55 million of funding support towards the construction of the plant, which is half of the EUR 110 million capital expenditures required. The next step is for the European Commission to approve the Federal Government's intention to provide funding before the installation of the new plant can begin. Production is scheduled to start in 2025.
This demonstrator plant, which will use hydrogen exclusively as the chemical agent to reduce iron ore into DRI, is intended to lay the foundation for a steelmaking process that means steel can be produced with zero carbon-emissions, using electric arc furnaces fed with hydrogen reduced DRI and scrap metal, powered by renewable electricity. In a transition phase, the process of reducing iron ore with hydrogen will first be demonstrated using hydrogen generated by the separation of waste gas from the Hamburg plant. Once available in sufficient volumes and at an affordable price, green hydrogen, made from the electrolysis of water using renewable energy, will be used.
The plant is an important component of ArcelorMittal Germany’s Steel4Future strategy, which involves the conversion of its four German plants, in Hamburg, Bremen, Duisburg and Eisenhüttenstadt, to zero carbon-emissions steel production in the coming years. By 2030, ArcelorMittal plans to produce more than one million tonnes of zero carbon-emissions steel a year in the Hamburg plant alone, thereby saving around 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions that result from activities within an organisation’s control. Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions from energy purchased by the organisation, for its own use.