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CLIMATE

Italy hit by 20 ‘severe weather events’ in a day as Liguria sees record rainfall

Italy is seeing historic levels of rainfall as a result of weather disturbances in the Atlantic, according to meteorologists.

Firefightersinspect damages caused by a landslide in Laglio, on July 28, 2021, after heavy rain caused floods in towns surrounding Lake Como in northern Italy.
Firefighters inspect damages caused by a landslide in Laglio, on July 28, 2021, after heavy rain caused floods in towns surrounding Lake Como in northern Italy. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

Severe weather has devastated farms and blocked roads in some areas this week as bad weather swept much of the country.

Three national records were broken in the space of a few hours on October 4th, reports the weather site Meteo Giornale.

The municipalities of Urbe and Montenotte Inferiore in the province of Savona experienced 368 mm in three hours and 490 mm in six hours respectively, while Rossiglione in the province of Genova saw 733 mm in 12 hours.

READ ALSO: Climate crisis: The Italian cities worst affected by flooding and heatwaves

All three areas are located in the hinterlands of the northwestern region of Liguria.

The country as a whole was hit by 20 severe weather events in one day on Monday, including tornadoes, hailstorms, windstorms, and torrential rainfall that caused damage to cities and countryside across the peninsula, with the northwest particularly badly affected, according to the agriculture industry association Coldiretti.

The storms “devastated fields, pastures, stables and agricultural vehicles as well as blocking roads and causing landslides and landslides in the countryside,” the association said in a press release published on Tuesday.

The group estimated that Italy’s agricultural industry has lost €2 billion so far this year as a result of extreme weather events.

More advanced and less bureaucratic risk management tools and structural interventions are required in order to mitigate the damage from severe weather, but “above all a commitment to curb climate change” is what’s necessary, the association said.

Extreme weather events including floods and wildfires are becoming more frequent in Italy, studies show.

In August the highest temperatures ever recorded in Europe were reported by Sicily’s Agrometeorological Information System (SIAS), which documented a temperature of 48.8°C near Syracuse on August 11th.

Thousands of forest fires were recorded across the peninsula over the summer, with one in the west of the island of Sardinia ravaging almost 20,000 hectares during the worst fires seen in decades.

Italy’s 2021 fire season was significantly more destructive than the previous average, according to EU data.

READ ALSO: Hundreds of youth activists protest climate inaction ahead of Milan summit

At a conference in Milan on Thursday, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged delegates due to attend the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow at the end of this month to bring their emissions plans in line with a 1.5C pathway.

“This means that they must commit to net-zero by mid-century, with ambitious 2030 targets, and clear plans to achieve them,” he said.

Guterres also called on developed nations at COP26 to make good on their promise to deliver $100 billion each year to countries already bearing the brunt of climate disasters.

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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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