The Anonymous Widower

Ørsted Secures Exclusive Access To Lower-Emission Steel From Dillinger

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

Ørsted will be offered the first production of lower-emission steel from German-based Dillinger, subject to availability and commercial terms and conditions. The steel plates are intended to be used for offshore wind monopile foundations in future projects.

These three paragraphs outline the deal.

Under a large-scale supply agreement entered into in 2022, Ørsted will procure significant volumes of regular heavy plate steel from 2024, giving the company access at scale to and visibility of the most crucial raw material in offshore wind while supporting Dillinger to accelerate investments in new lower-emission steel production, according to Ørsted.

The Danish renewable energy giant expects to be able to procure lower-emission steel produced at Dillinger’s facility in Dillingen, Germany, from 2027-2028.

Taking the current technology outlook into account, the reduction of the process-related carbon emissions from production is expected to be around 55-60 per cent compared to conventional heavy plate steel production, Ørsted said.

Increasingly, we’ll see lower emission steel and concrete used for wind turbine foundations.

This press release on the Dillinger web site is entitled Historic Investment For Greater Climate Protection: Supervisory Boards Approve Investment Of EUR 3.5 billion For Green Steel From Saarland.

These are two paragraphs from the press release.

Over the next few years leading up to 2027, in addition to the established blast furnace route, the new production line with an electric arc furnace (EAF) will be built at the Völklingen site and an EAF and direct reduced iron (DRI) plant for the production of sponge iron will be built at the Dillinger plant site. Transformation branding has also been developed to visually represent the transformation: “Pure Steel+”. The message of “Pure Steel+” is that Saarland’s steel industry will retain its long-established global product quality, ability to innovate, and culture, even in the transformation. The “+” refers to the carbon-neutrality of the products.

The availability of green hydrogen at competitive prices is a basic precondition for this ambitious project to succeed, along with prompt funding commitments from Berlin and Brussels. Local production of hydrogen will therefore be established as a first step together with the local energy suppliers, before connecting to the European hydrogen network to enable use of hydrogen to be increased to approx. 80 percent. The Saarland steel industry is thus laying the foundation for a new hydrogen-based value chain in the Saarland, in addition to decarbonizing its own production. In this way, SHS – Stahl-Holding-Saar is supporting Saarland on its path to becoming a model region for transformation.

It sounds to me, that Tata Steel could be doing something similar at Port Talbot.

  • Tata want to build an electric arc furnace to replace the blast furnaces.
  • There will be plenty of green electricity from the Celtic Sea.
  • RWE are planning a very large hydrogen electrolyser in Pembroke.
  • Celtic Sea offshore wind developments would probably like a supply of lower emission steel on their door-step.

I would suspect, that Welsh steel produced by an electric arc furnace will match the quality of the German steel, that is made the same way.

March 13, 2024 - Posted by | Energy | , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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