SSAB to Be First to Market with Fossil-Free Steel

SSAB, a Metal-Expo exhibitor plans to be the first company in the world to get fossil-free steel onto the market. The plan for transitioning to iron-ore based fossil-free steel production was presented to more than 400 customers and key players in the industry, in conjunction with SSAB’s Swedish Steel Prize seminars this week in Stockholm. Mr Martin Lindqvist SSAB’s President and CEO said ”SSAB will offer the first fossil-free steel products on the market already in 2026. We seek to initiate partnerships with our customers around common goals so that they can be the first in the world to include fossil-free steel in their own products.”

Recently it was announced that the HYBRIT initiative, where SSAB is one of the owners, will step up work and that SSAB will be able to deliver fossil-free steel to the market already in 2026. In line with SSAB’s global ambitions, the company anticipates that its US operations, which utilize scrap-based electric arc furnace technology, will be powered completely by renewable energy by 2022 in its Iowa operations. It will also be able to offer fossil-free steel products starting in 2026, utilizing sponge iron developed through the HYBRIT initiative in Sweden.

That SSAB already at this stage seeks to engage customers in its plans to switch over to a completely new steelmaking technology is a natural step in the company’s ambition to step up the pace in transitioning to being fossil free.

In 2016, SSAB, together with LKAB and Vattenfall, launched the HYBRIT initiative with the goal to replace coal and coke, which are used as reduction agents in the steelmaking process, with fossil-free hydrogen gas. Interest in fossil-free steel has since grown rapidly. SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall, the owners behind the HYBRIT initiative, have decided on investments totaling around SEK 1.7 billion and the Swedish Energy Agency has granted government support totaling SEK 599 million.

Further, SSAB has decided to replace the two blast furnaces in Oxelösund with an electric arc furnace already in 2025. This will eliminate most of the carbon dioxide emissions at SSAB Oxelösund. The switch to an electric arc furnace is a necessary step in order to be able to utilize the sponge iron from the HYBRIT demonstration plant, which will start operating at the same time.