15
to a patient with a broken leg,” says
Lindqvist. “If we have the chance to
really solve the root cause of the real
problem, why not do that?”
SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall spent
about $2 million studying hydrogen-
steel technology, and in 2017, they had
one of their first successes. “I still re-
member when I held that first piece of
fossil-free steel made in a laboratory in
Stockholm,” Lindqvist says. “I thought,
This might actually work.” Lindqvist
and other executives then went to
their companies’ boards and asked for
$160 million to build a pilot plant to
develop the technology further. If that
trial was successful, the next step was
building a full-scale production plant.
Last August, SSAB used the pilot
plant to produce its first emissions-free
steel. Workers involved in the process
made a video documenting the effort.
“When I saw that video... I almost
had tears in my eyes because they were
so proud,” says Lindqvist. “They felt
that we were doing something very
important, and that we were part of a
solution.”
With HYBRIT’s success, SSAB is
moving ahead with plans to scale up
its green steel process to a million tons a year by 2026. But
there are significant obstacles to a similar ramp up for other
steelmakers around the world. For one thing, green steel
costs about 25% more to make than its conventional coun-
terpart, according to the RMI, a climate think tank. Some
steel buyers, like automakers, have been eager to purchase
slightly more expensive “green steel” in an effort to cut
emissions from their products’ value chain—Volvo, for in-
stance, made the world’s first vehicle using entirely fossil-
fuel-free steel from SSAB last October. But some analysts
are doubtful if the wider market of steel buyers will be will-
ing to pay more.
Another problem is that the green hydrogen steelmaking
method only works with a kind of very high-quality iron
ore, which not everyone uses—though companies pursuing
the technology say they are developing ways to use lower-
grade ores as well. There’s also an international dimension:
even if policies in Europe and the U.S. help facilitate a
transition to zero-carbon steel, the biggest player is still
China, which produces half the world’s steel, largely in
coal-fired blast furnaces. “China is always a bit of a mystery
box,” says Thomas Koch Blank, a principal at RMI. “China
has very high top-down aspirations [to decarbonize steel],
and it’s a little unclear how fast they trickle down to real
market policy.”
There’s also the simple fact of how much needs to change
in such a short time span. The world produced nearly
2 billion tons of steel in 2021. Even if SSAB decarbonizes all
its furnaces, it’ll only amount to just under half a percent of
the world’s annual production. “Things are going very fast,”
says Domien Vangenechten, a policy adviser at European
climate think tank E3G. “But it’s way too early to say that we
are on the right trajectory toward net-zero emissions in the
steel industry.”
Still, Vangenechten says, the past three years have been
“remarkable” compared with where things were before.
SSAB isn’t the only company leading that change— Swedish
startup H2 Green Steel, for instance, is also aiming to com-
mercialize hydrogen-based steel production in coming
years. What’s unique about SSAB is that they’ve been in the
steelmaking business for more than 140 years, an anomaly in
a world where many legacy companies tend to do all they can
to delay climate action. And while the conventional climate
narrative has been that polluting sectors only change when
outside disrupters like Elon Musk or Engine No. 1 shake
things up, Lindqvist, the CEO of SSAB since 2011, is an old
hand in the steel world, having worked at the company for
nearly 2�∕� decades.
Those facts might be an exception that proves a rule
about old, polluting industries. Or perhaps it’s a signal that
those companies actually have more capacity to change
than their executives assume, if they decide to step up to
the moment. For Lindqvist, the decision to pursue radical
decarbonization came partly as a cold-eyed business plan,
and partly because it was the right thing to do. “Everyone
has a responsibility to reduce emissions,” he says. “But
as the CEO of a big emitter of carbon dioxide, I have a big
responsibility.” ‘If we
have the
chance to
really solve
the root
cause...
why not
do that?’
—MARTIN LINDQVIST,
CEO, SSABEcopreneurs, a new TIME series, introduces the innovators taking risks to protect the planet’s future