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GE boss looks to Germany as role model

The head of US firm General Electric applauded German industry on Wednesday as an example for American businesses to follow, in a reversal of the usual direction of praise.

GE boss looks to Germany as role model
Jeffrey Immelt. Photo: DPA

In an interview with weekly paper Die Zeit, Jeffrey Immelt, who is one of the world’s most powerful executives, praised the German economy’s high proportion of manufactured exports.

“We Americans have to believe again that we can build things too,” he said. “I’m always saying lately, that we have to follow the example of Germany.

“More than 40 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product is exports, while in the USA it is only 7 percent. That is laughable.”

Immelt also used the interview to criticise the continuing American resistance to embracing climate change measures as a business opportunity, as have many German firms.

“I personally believe that green investment is one of the great growth industries of the 21st century,” he said. “You have to be quick and position yourself at the forefront or you’ll be left behind.

“China will invest more this year in wind energy than the USA. It’s just not enough, this ‘wait-and-see’ that we’re doing. The world will move on without our country. And it’s very important to me that GE is part of this movement,” he said.

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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden’s SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa. 

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology. 

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces. 

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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