Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ENVIRONMENT

Court gives Swedish start-up go ahead for fossil-free steel plant

A court in Sweden has given the steel company H2 Green Steel the go ahead to start building a coal-free steel plant in northern Sweden, the first greenfield steel plant in Europe in 50 years.

Published: 1 July 2022 10:30 CEST
Court gives Swedish start-up go ahead for fossil-free steel plant
A rendering of how the plant in Boden, northern Sweden, might look when it is complete. Photo: H2 Green Steel

Sweden’s environmental court, or Mark- och miljödomstolen, gave the company permission to start building, so long as it puts in place measures to protect the local environment and nearby communities, and also compensates for any damage done. 

“It is unavoidable that establishing such a large steel work will impact on the natural environment and that species in the local area will be affected,” the judge Katarina Brodin said in a press statement. “Such a large business is also going to impact on those living near the steel plant, both while it is being built and when it is in operation. 

But she the court ruled that the urgent need to cut carbon emissions from global steel production meant the benefits outweighed the possible impact on the local environment. 

“The Court states…that the manufacturing process entails large carbon dioxide emissions and that it is important to take measures as soon as possible to reduce these emissions globally,” it ruled. “The company’s intention to build and operate a facility for fossil-free steel production is in line with this endeavour.” 

READ ALSO: 

The company, which is headed by Henrik Henriksson, the former chief executive of the truck-maker Scania, aims to start production at the start of 2025, making it the first industrial scale hydrogen steel plant in the world.  

The plant will be built in Svartbyn, just outside the city of Boden in Norrbotten, Sweden’s most northerly county. 

The company has applied to build a plant which can produce 4.2m tonnes of hydrogen-reduced sponge iron a year, along with a hydrogen production facility which can produce 280,000 tonnes of the gas. 

The court also gave the company permission to divert and damm the Lillbäcken river, and has given it a dispensation from some requirements to protect animal and plant species.

The decision only gives the company permission to start construction at the plant. The court will now consider the company’s application to operate the plant. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Several hundred women surrounded Sweden's parliament with a giant knitted red scarf to protest political inaction over global warming.

Published: 22 April 2024 11:47 CEST
Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Responding to a call from the Mothers Rebellion movement (Rebellmammorna in Swedish), the women marched around the Riksdag with the scarf made of 3,000 smaller scarves, urging politicians to honour a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“I am here for my child Dinalo and for all the kids. I am angry and sad that politicians in Sweden are acting against the climate,” Katarina Utne, 41, a mother of a four-year-old and human resources coach, told AFP.

The women unfurled their scarves and marched for several hundred metres, singing and holding placards calling to “save the climate for the children’s future”.

“The previous government was acting too slowly. The current government is going in the wrong direction in terms of climate policy,” said psychologist Sara Nilsson Lööv, referring to a recent report on Swedish climate policy.

The government, led by the conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats, is in danger of failing to meet its 2030 climate targets, an agency tasked with evaluating climate policy recently reported.

According to the Swedish Climate Policy Council, the government has made decisions, including financial decisions, that will increase greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

“Ordinary people have to step up. Sweden is not the worst country but has been better previously,” 67-year-old pensioner Charlotte Bellander said.

The global movement, Mothers Rebellion, was established by a group of mothers in Sweden, Germany, the USA, Zambia and Uganda.

It organises peaceful movements in public spaces by sitting and singing but does not engage in civil disobedience, unlike the Extinction Rebellion movement, which some of its organisers came from.

SHOW COMMENTS