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WEATHER

Storm warnings issued for France as heatwave set to break

The late summer heatwave that France is enjoying is predicted to break in spectacular fashion on Wednesday afternoon, with storm warnings issued one third of the country, including the Paris region.

Published: 8 September 2021 09:14 CEST
Storm warnings issued for France as heatwave set to break
Photo: Emmanuel Pionner/AFP/Meteo France

After an unusually cool and damp July and August, France has been basking in temperatures up to 31C over the past week.

However Wednesday sees 32 départements, roughly a third of the country, placed on alert for thunderstorms with torrential rain, the possibility of localised flooding and hail in some areas.

The storms are predicted to hit on Wednesday afternoon and evening in the départements of Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Val-d’Oise, Allier, Aude, Ariège, Aveyron, Cher, Corrèze, Creuse, Dordogne, Eure-et-Loir, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Indre, Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Nièvre, Hautes-Pyrénées, Sarthe, Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Haute-Vienne and Yonne. 

French weather forecaster Météo France is predicting very heavy rain in a short time (40 to 60 mm in three to four hours), as well as hail in places and strong gusts of wind (80 to 100 km/h). 

The heaviest rainfall is expected in the northern part of the Aude département and southern Tarn, where 100 to 120mm of rain could fall in three hours.

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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.

Published: 2 April 2024 13:44 CEST
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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