"NORRLAND IS THE largest of Sweden's three historical "lands". It spans the top half of the country and is sparsely populated, the more so the farther north you go. The few people who live there have long relied for work on mining, the army and forestry. Most of Sweden's industry is far to the south. But Norrland abounds in hydropower. Power that is cheap and--crucially--green, along with bargain land and proximity to iron ore, is sparking an improbable industrial revolution, based on hydrogen, "green" steel and batteries.
SSAB, a steelmaker, is poised to deliver its first consignment of "eco-steel" from a hydrogen-fuelled pilot plant in Lulea, a northern city. Volvo, an industrial-vehicle firm these days, will use the steel to build lorries. Of the six or seven tonnes that its typical lorry weighs, around five consist of steel.
And for each tonne of steel produced using fossil fuels, around two tonnes of planet-cooking carbon dioxide get belched into the atmosphere.
To make steel, iron ore must be melted at high temperatures and reduced from iron oxide to iron, a process that typically involves burning fossil fuels, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Replacing them with hydrogen as a reducing agent eliminates more than 98% of the carbon dioxide normally released. The hydrogen is made by electrolysing water, using electricity produced by hydro-power. This approach involves almost no carbon-dioxide emissions at all.
Scania, another automotive firm, is also hoping to exploit Norrland's cheap hydro-power. It plans to make 15,000 battery-powered trucks a year by 2025, around 15% of its annual production. To that end it has invested in Northvolt, a new battery-making enterprise powered by Norrland's hydro-electricity. Northvolt's main facility is in Skelleftea, 130km south-west of Lulea. It is also building a battery-recycling plant there (see Science section). By the end of 2021 the company hopes to have churned out enough batteries to store 16 gigawatt-hours. Carl-Erik Lagercrantz, Northvolt's chairman, wants to scale that up eventually to 150 gigawatt-hours a year. If he does so by 2030, he will be supplying a sizeable amount of the European Union's expected annual demand of some 450 gigawatt-hours of electric-vehicle battery capacity by 2030.
Mr Lagercrantz also wants to get into the green-steel business. Taking inspiration from SSAB's pilot project, he decided to have a go at hydrogen-based steelmaking too, and founded H2 Green Steel. Production will be based in Boden, an old army town 30km north-west of Lulea. The new plant will make 5m tonnes of flat steel a year by 2030, a small but meaningful percentage of the 90m tonnes that is currently consumed annually in the EU." [1]
How dare those Swedes? Instead of army games, make clean steel, cars out of it and batteries. We, Lithuanians, in the meantime are hiding in the bushes en masse and waiting for the Russians to come. Gabrielius Landsbergis failed. After all, it is his job to convince our Swedish neighbors that war with the Russians is the foundation of our lives. No green steel. No industry. Forward volunteers ...
1. "Green steel; Sweden." The Economist, 15 May 2021, p. 46(US).
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