Today, the ground will be broken for HYBRIT’s world-first pilot plant for creating fossil-free steel, with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven as keynote speaker. SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall have, together with the Swedish Energy Agency, decided to invest SEK 1,4 billion in the pilot plant. This means that the HYBRIT initiative now enters its second phase. The goal is a fossil-free, ore-based steel production, on an industrial scale. 

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven breaks the ground today for a globally-unique pilot plant for HYBRIT, the initiative from SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall for fossil-free steel. The three owner companies, with the support of the Swedish Energy Agency, recently decided to join forces to invest SEK 1.4 billion in the pilot plants, one of which will be built at SSAB’s site in Luleå. This means that SSAB is taking the next important step towards the goal of being totally fossil-free by 2045.

HYBRIT—SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall’s project for creating fossil-free steel—has been granted SEK 528 million in financial backing by the Swedish Energy Agency. HYBRIT has the potential to reduce Sweden’s total carbon dioxide emissions by ten percent, and Finland’s emissions by seven percent. For Sweden’s part, the reduction has been described as crucial to the country’s efforts to meet the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.