Insane German attempt to make super-expensive steel
In Germany’s industrial heartland, a slender spire of tubes rises amid a cluster of smoke-belching foundries. Owned by Salzgitter AG, Germany’s second-largest steelmaker, the installation is an ambitious attempt to revolutionize the steelmaking process, and ultimately, secure a critical piece of the country’s economy.
Steel is the most important material for Germany’s manufacturing sector, going into everything from Volkswagen AG automobiles to the advanced machinery made by Siemens AG. The metal is “the starting point of any value chain that you can think of,” Salzgitter Chief Executive Officer Gunnar Groebler said in a Bloomberg TV interview, describing it as “an important factor in any industry in any economy.”
Yet steel is also one of the worst offenders in terms of carbon emissions. Its production techniques, which have remained unchanged for over a century and a half, rely on fossil fuel-burning furnaces that generate over one ton of carbon for each ton of steel created — more than the cement or chemicals sectors.
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Europe conference outside Dublin this week, Rachel Muncrief, deputy director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, singled out steel for not getting enough attention as a “massive polluter.”
With Germany racing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the switch to green steel is an early test of what kinds of heavy industry Europe will be able to retain – and adapt — in the transition to a cleaner economy.
It’s also a deeply personal question in steelmaking regions like Lower Saxony, the Ruhr valley and Saarland. If beleaguered German steel companies Thyssenkrupp AG, Salzgitter and Dillinger Hüttenwerke falter, firms like Mercedes-Benz AG and BMW AG will have to turn elsewhere for supplies. That could potentially lead manufacturing supply chains to drift overseas, and would close a chapter on a key part of the country’s industrial heritage.
“Not managing to achieve this transformation to clean technologies means the end of steel here,” said Juergen Barke, economy minister of Saarland, which witnessed the closure of an ironworks factory that produced steel helmets for the Kaiser’s armies in World War I. “It’s a question of survival.”
Salzgitter’s site in the gentle hills of Lower Saxony is a case study in real-time structural change. While molten metal streams from the bowels of the three coal-fired blast furnaces on one edge of the sprawling facility, elsewhere on the site, a twist of pipes uses power from nearby wind turbines to convert water into hydrogen, which then gets pumped into chambers to refine raw iron ore into purified pellets, known as sponge.
In contrast to traditional foundries, iron used in the green steel process doesn’t need to be melted. To complete the conversion, the purified ore is combined with other elements in an electric-powered furnace akin to a giant pressure cooker. The process eliminates some 97% of carbon emissions but implementing it doesn’t come cheap: while Salzgitter has already secured nearly €1 billion ($1.07 billion) in state aid, the first phase of the transition alone is expected to cost the company as much as €2.4 billion.
To make green steel production work over long haul, Salzgitter needs to ensure that it has enough renewable power and the right infrastructure to convert energy into hydrogen – and that customers, or governments, are willing to cover the potentially greater costs.
Under pressure from investors and regulators, steelmakers across Europe are pouring resources into the challenge. Salzgitter aims to convert all three of its traditional foundries by 2033, and other competitors are getting ready as well. ArcelorMittal is investing in facilities in France and Belgium, while in Sweden, SSAB and startup H2 Green Steel are working on projects that would tap the country’s hydropower resources.
All this is just a small window into Germany’s larger struggle to prove that it has a future both as a net-zero country and an energy-intensive production location. The imperative of hitting climate goals means abandoning coal, the fuel around which Germany’s steelmaking regions originally sprang up, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has meant the end of its reliance on cheap natural gas. Moreover, as green energy executives eye the Middle East and North Africa for future production sites, Germany’s capacity to produce renewable resources is limited by its relatively small coastline and dark winters.
For the steel industry, these challenges are forcing them to consider options that would have once seemed far-fetched. Thyssenkrupp is mulling a plan that could see it reduce upstream steel production and instead import foreign steel blocks into Germany, where they would be processed into higher-value products.
While this would reduce the manufacturer’s carbon footprint, the Duisburg-based company may have little choice in the decision: to make the enough hydrogen for a year’s worth of green steel, it would need a year’s worth of power from 3,800 wind turbines — about 13% of Germany’s current capacity.
The weeds sprouting between the rusting pipes of the Voelklingen ironworks in western Germany indicate what can happen if this transition goes wrong. Once among the mightiest metal producers in Europe, the plant closed down in 1986 after failing to adapt to the onset of globalization.
At its peak in the 1960s, more than 17,000 workers labored in around-the-clock shifts to melt and mold metal at the Voelklingen factory. Now, more than three decades on, what was once a sprawling array of blast furnaces, ore conveyors and coking plants has been transformed into an art space and destination for fans of industrial history.
In a cavernous hall that used to house giant blowers to keep furnaces blazing, a video work called “When We Are Gone” by Julian Rosefeldt explores the demise of the capitalist system. Playing in a loop amid silent machinery, the film follows scientists who have returned to a barren earth to research the legacies of now-vanished cultures. It’s an unsettling critique of Germany’s existing industrial economy, and a reminder of how much work the country must undertake to adapt this economy to a net-zero future.
But the people on the front lines are optimistic.
“We need to be courageous in order to overcome the huge challenges facing German industry,” Saarland’s Barke said. “We’re working hard to make this transition a success.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-fights-green-production-most-040000918.html
*******************************************Biden's Energy Secretary Endorses Suicidal Mission for the U.S. Military
Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says she supports requiring the U.S. military to adopt an ALL-electric vehicle fleet by 2030
Ah yes, this will work perfectly in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Africa and everywhere else around the globe without electric charging stations. And how long does Granholm propose U.S. troops ask the enemy to hold off while they wait for days to recharge their military vehicles?
Of course this is an idea also backed by President Joe Biden, who insists the military should be 100 percent electric in the next decade.
During Earth Day remarks delivered in Washington state on April 22, Biden said, “We’re going to start the process for every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle is going to be climate-friendly.”
“Every vehicle. I mean it. We’re spending billions of dollars to do it,” he said.
To make every one of those vehicles climate-friendly would place service members at increased risk, as well as bankrupt the Department of Defense, all in the pursuit of Biden’s misguided goal.
Warfighters rely on our government to provide them the best tactical equipment available. By declaring that “every vehicle” in the military will be “climate friendly,” Biden risks sacrificing warfighting capability in the pursuit of his radical climate agenda.
It's a delusional proposal that puts the national security of the U.S. at risk, not to mention putting the country even further behind when it comes to global competition
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How the Green cult has disarmed Europe
Most NATO members have long failed to meet the alliance’s defense-spending benchmark of 2% of GDP. Europe’s defense industry relies on private investment to help fund research and development, training and recruitment of a skilled workforce, and more. Yet in recent years defense investment has become taboo.
Much of the pressure not to spend comes from the political left that lobbies investors and legislatures through nonprofits. “We have a problem because we think that deliveries and weapons exports” are “fueling conflicts and are at the end responsible for deaths and a big number of refugees,” says Thomas Küchenmeister, managing director of the nonprofit Facing Finance.
The Swedish Consumers’ Association says it wants to restrict investment in defense companies that make controversial weapons like mines or cluster munitions or sell to governments that are corrupt, unstable, have a poor track record on human rights, or “spend a disproportionate part of their budget on purchases of arms.” But war is an inherently ugly business, and good luck finding a defense company that can meet these standards.
The ESG mindset has also spread to European Union institutions. The European Investment Bank, the EU’s development bank, has a policy against providing financing for “ammunition and weapons, including explosives and sporting weapons, as well as equipment or infrastructure dedicated to military/police use.”
The Ecolabel is a voluntary EU certification program that directs consumers to sustainable products and businesses, and an effort is underway to include financial products. But the most recent draft proposal suggests a restriction against investment in companies that derive “more than 5% turnover from the production or trade of conventional weapons and/or military products used for combat.” Have they told the Russians?
The EU is also working to develop a unified definition for what qualifies as an ESG investment. In July 2021 the EU published a draft proposal for a “social taxonomy” that lists weapons alongside gambling and tobacco as “harmful sectors or activities” that “cannot qualify as socially sustainable despite e.g. good worker-related performance.”
After Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, a proposal scaled back the social-taxonomy language to designate as “harmful” only controversial weapons like mines, cluster munitions and chemical or biological weapons.
But Jan Pie, secretary general of the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe, says “European banks and investors have picked up the signal that Europe would be about to say defense is not a sustainable activity.” Mr. Pie says some investors are limiting exposure to the defense industry, some banks have denied loans and guarantees, and some insurers are raising premiums.
Alessandra Genco, chief financial officer at the Italian aerospace and defense company Leonardo, said the industry may face higher capital costs if fewer banks and institutions are unwilling to invest. Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said last month that it’s “a problem” that “our pension funds here in the Netherlands prefer not to invest in the defense industry.”
Examples abound of financial institutions that have adopted policies to restrict defense investment. Allianz Global Investors says its sustainable-labeled funds don’t invest in companies that derive more than 10% of revenue from weapons, military equipment and services.
The German GLS Bank condemns “the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a war of aggression and against international law,” says spokeswoman Nora Schareika. But the bank doesn’t invest in “weapons and armaments,” a policy “based on its conviction” that they “can never be sustainable, since they destroy lives.”
Bad actors like Russia and China share no such ethical qualms. They respect only military power. A West that is reluctant to arm itself won’t deter aggressors, and the result will be a more dangerous, violent world.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-defense-spending-esg-investment-russia-china-ukraine-ac7a6829
*****************************************Carbon capture project in Norway temporarily halted by high costs
A project to capture carbon emissions from a waste plant in the Norwegian capital Oslo has been paused for a year amid projections of large cost overruns, potentially dealing a blow to wider Norwegian plans to foster the fledgling technology.
"New cost calculations show that we cannot implement the original plans for the carbon capture project within the existing budget," Knut Inderhaug, head of project operator Hafslund Oslo Celsio, said in a statement.
The reasons were higher costs from suppliers due to inflation, the geopolitical instability that has lifted energy prices, and a weakened Norwegian crown, Celsio said without providing specific overrun figures.
Investment costs for the Klemetsrud waste plant, which are being subsidised by both the Oslo city council and the Norwegian government, were initially set at 5.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($518.88 million).
To date, Celsio has spent around 450 million crowns, a spokesperson told Reuters.
The company will now take a 12-month hiatus to find ways to reduce costs, which would delay the project from its initial 2026 commissioning date, it said.
Celsio was also in contact with municipal and state stakeholders over how best to realise the project.
The CO2 captured at Klemetsrud is part of Norway's prestigious Longship carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which also includes carbon capture at a cement plant and the Northern Lights transport and storage project.
Klemetsrud was expected to capture round 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, corresponding to 14% of Oslo's overall emissions of greenhouse gases.
The delay would likely impact deposits at Northern Lights, a joint venture founded by oil firms Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell, although interest from European customers may see lost volumes replaced, Celsio's spokesperson added.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
1 comment:
Anyone proposing a mandate for an all electric military is a complete and utter fool and should be laughed out of their position in shame, the fact that the idea gained traction at all is an indication of just how incredibly dumb the current administration has become.
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