GEORGSMARIENHÜTTE (dpa-AFX) - Lower Saxony-based steelmaker Georgsmarienhütte (GMH) plans to switch completely to CO2-free steel by 2039. The "green hydrogen" required for this is to be supplied by Oldenburg-based utility EWE, as both companies announced on Thursday. A letter of intent to this effect was signed in Georgsmarienhütte.

"With our infrastructure, especially in the field of cavern storage and pipeline-based transport of hydrogen, we offer the basis for being able to safely supply an industrial consumer like GMH with "green hydrogen" on a large scale," said EWE CEO Stefan Dohler. Therefore, he said, the company was also in a position to supply GMH with "green hydrogen" produced from green electricity for steel production, which EWE planned to produce in plants near the North Sea coast using wind power. The hydrogen could then be delivered to Georgsmarienhütte by pipeline.

The background to this is the restructuring of the steel industry in the course of the energy transition. Both Georgsmarienhütte and Lower Saxony's second steelmaker Salzgitter want to switch completely to steel produced without CO2. Georgsmarienhütte wants to cut CO2 emissions by half by 2030, and then produce completely carbon neutral by 2039. "With our lead technology electric steel and optimized processes, as well as the use of hydrogen instead of natural gas, this is realistically feasible," said GMH CEO Alexander Becker. "We are therefore pleased to have found a strong partner close to our largest steel mill who will go down this path with us."

EWE plans to build its own hydrogen production facility near the North Sea coast under the project name "Clean Hydrogen Coastline." "We want to build up to 400 megawatts of electrolysis capacity at system-serving sites near the German North Sea coast, from which we can produce up to 40,000 metric tons of "green hydrogen" per year from 2026, depending on the sales market," Dohler said. Wind power from onshore and offshore plants will make hydrogen production completely CO2-free.

Minister President Stephan Weil (SPD), who had cancelled his attendance at the signing ceremony in Georgsmarienhütte at short notice, said by statement: "I am very pleased that EWE and Georgsmarienhütte have agreed to significantly accelerate the development of the hydrogen industry. Lower Saxony offers unique locational advantages in these areas in particular: plenty of wind energy on land and at sea, important seaports for importing and distributing green hydrogen, and large-volume underground formations for storing hydrogen."

According to Weil, this also strengthens the state as an industrial location. "This is a real opportunity for Lower Saxony," Weil had already said at the Tennet grid summit in Lehrte on Wednesday. "We want to try to attract more industry to Lower Saxony from this. Following the old logic: industry follows energy."

The steel industry has been considered one of the state's largest CO2 emitters. Salzgitter AG alone is responsible for one percent of CO2 emissions in the whole of Germany, according to its own figures. By 2033, the company aims to reduce the figure to almost zero. The first blast furnace, in which iron ore has so far been smelted using coal, will go out of operation as early as 2026. As a replacement, "green" hydrogen will also be used in Salzgitter./fjo/DP/stw