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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden: Thunberg ‘looking for lift across Atlantic’ for Spanish climate summit

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg had made it half-way from Sweden to Chile by boat, train and electric car when next month's UN climate summit was unexpectedly scrapped.

Sweden: Thunberg 'looking for lift across Atlantic' for Spanish climate summit
Image: Kirsty Wigglesworth/TT

But as a new venue was announced Friday for the gathering called COP25  — this time in Spain — the 16-year-old didn't bat an eyelid: she simply asked for a lift back across the Atlantic.

“As #COP25 has officially been moved from Santiago to Madrid I'll need some help,” Thunberg tweeted from Los Angeles.

“It turns out I've traveled half around the world, the wrong way:)” “Now I need to find a way to cross the Atlantic in November… If anyone could help me find transport I would be so grateful,” said the teen, who refuses to fly because of the carbon emissions involved.

Thunberg's highly publicized journey has so far involved crossing on a zero-emission sailboat from the coast of England to New York, traveling overland through North America by train and in an electric car borrowed from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

She was one of around 25,000 delegates expected in Santiago for the United Nations climate summit, until Chile pulled out as host this week due to deadly anti-government protests.

The United Nations announced Friday that COP 25 will finally take place in Madrid, on the original scheduled dates of December 2-13.

The Swedish teen activist Thunberg rose to prominence last year after she started spending her Fridays outside Sweden's parliament, holding a sign reading “School strike for climate.”

Students across the world began emulating her campaign, leading to organized school walkouts and the rise of the “Fridays for Future” movement which targets government action on climate change.

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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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