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Danish dairy giant wants CO2-neutral milk production by 2050

Dairy producer Arla wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and has worked on a plan that encompasses the company’s farming, production and transport.

Danish dairy giant wants CO2-neutral milk production by 2050
File photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

A new overarching emissions plan announced by the company includes, for the first time, the agricultural production of its milk on farms.

Key aspects of the plan include targets of a 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030; and completely CO2-neutral milk production by 2050, Politiken reports.

Arla CEO Peder Tuborgh said the climate goals were an important step for the company.

“This is the right thing to do with regard to the way the world is today. The effects on the world of CO2 are not sustainable. And consumers have a clear agenda. They will go somewhere else if you stay away from this area,” Tuborgh said to Politiken.

Tuborgh and Arla are making a sensible choice by backing a climate-friendly business model, according to Jan Holm Ingemann, an agricultural economist at Aalborg University’s Department of Political Science.

“This is sensible. I would almost call it a necessary decision by Arla. And Arla is not alone in having made such a decision. We have also recently seen Danish Crown take a similar step,” Ingemann said.

“If you want to retain the confidence of younger consumers, this is necessary. They demand action. For them, words are not enough, so you have to show that you can set ambitious and visionary targets,” the researcher added.

Arla’s climate plan will affect 1.5 million cows, 10,000 farms and 70 dairies throughout northwestern Europe.

READ ALSO: Danish dairy giant preparing for no-deal Brexit

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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.

READ ALSO: 

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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