Salzgitter
Assembly Line
🇩🇪 How Germany’s steelmakers plan to go green
Global steel production today accounts for at least 7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In Germany, it emits more than a quarter of the country’s total industrial carbon dioxide. Salzgitter has said that once its revamped steel plant is run entirely on green hydrogen, its annual CO2 emissions, which currently stand at 8mn tonnes, will drop by a staggering 95 per cent.
German authorities have pledged more than €6bn in subsidies to steelmakers in a bid to shore up Europe’s largest industrial base, which is already struggling with high energy prices and falling global demand for its cars and machinery. The full implementation of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, a tariff regime intended to give Europe’s basic industries protection from cheaper, dirtier imports while they decarbonise their own operations, has opened a window of opportunity for such heavy investment.