Skip to main content
14 March 2022 | Article

Hydrogen changes Sweden

Hydrogen will be much more than just a fuel for energy transformation in Sweden. Hydrogen will make Sweden look very different from what it is today. The government estimates that about 100,000 new inhabitants will be needed in the two northernmost counties by the year 2035 — a 20 percent increase in the population of 500,000 who currently live in Norrbotten and Västerbotten.

Visa Noronen
Visa Noronen
Hydrogen changes Sweden

Once the new hydrogen industry employees arrive in the region, many other people will follow. Hydrogen engineers need teachers for their children, waiters in restaurants and construction workers to build new houses. Universities are already opening new programmes to educate young engineers for the region. Northern Sweden will be more alive than ever before.

Steel leads the way in Luleå and Gällivare

Johan Sandstedt, Research & Business Developer at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, highlights three business areas looking for vast amounts of hydrogen in the country.

Johan Sandstedt

“Swedish steel industry is globally leading as a developer of technology for fossil-free steel production,” Sandstedt says.

There are several projects in the country aiming to produce steel without CO₂ emissions.

Swedish green steel venture HYBRIT has already made the world's first customer delivery of steel produced without carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. HYBRIT, owned by steel company SSAB, power company Vattenfall and mining company LKAB, started test operations at its pilot plant for fossil-free steel in Luleå almost two years ago. SSAB plans now to transform its Nordic strip production to cut its carbon footprint. SSAB‘s ambition is to largely eliminate carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, 15 years earlier than previously announced.

SSAB-HYBRIT_pilot_plant.jpg
SSAB
 

Fossil-free iron and steel production using HYBRIT technology will require around 15 TWh of fossil free electricity a year at SSAB’s current production levels. LKAB plans to make fossil fuel-free sponge iron in Gällivare to be able to supply SSAB and others with feedstock by 2030. Once completed, the conversion of LKAB’s operations will require a total of around 55 TWh a year — including most of SSAB’s requirement. A major share of energy will be used as hydrogen.

SSAB-First_delivery_of_fossil_free_steel.jpg
SSAB

Major plans for Boden and Hofors

“Hybrit is only one of several projects in the field,” Sandstedt points out.

H2 Green Steel consortium is planning to make CO₂-free steel in the region. By 2026, the plant in north Sweden’s Boden is to produce 2.5 million tons of hydrogen-powered steel annually, and 5 million tons from 2030. The company's electricity use is estimated to reach 12 TWh when production is in full swing in 2030, almost ten percent of today's Swedish electricity use. A major share of that will also be used as hydrogen.

In addition to the plans in the north, the Swedish steel industry needs hydrogen elsewhere. In central Sweden, in Hofors, close to Gävle, Ovako has conducted a full-scale trial using hydrogen to heat steel before rolling. The company is looking forward to starting industrial production later, and that will require lot plenty of hydrogen.

Hydrogen for fuel production and chemical industry

“Sweden also needs hydrogen for the chemical industry as well as for producing bio and synthetic fuels,” Sandstedt tells. Industrial ambitions are high.

For instance, LiquidWind aims to capture carbon dioxide and combine this with hydrogen to produce carbon neutral fuel, eMethanol. It plans to build its first commercial scale eMethanol facility in Örnsköldsvik. The facility is expected to produce 50,000 tons of renewable methanol every year. The feedstock for the facility will use biogenic carbon dioxide from a biomass-fired power plant and combine it with hydrogen produced with electrolysis. The growth plans are impressive. It is going to build 500 facilities by 2050.

eMethanol provides an alternative to fossil fuels and a potential pathway to reduce carbon emissions by over 90 percent in marine transportation. eMethanol can also be used as a building block in the production of other sustainable chemicals. These include acetic acid, formaldehyde and olefins. This synthetic methanol can contribute to the decarbonization of industries such as adhesives, solvents and plastics.

More security of supply by connecting Swedish and Finnish hydrogen grids

To supply its industry with sufficient hydrogen, Sweden needs to build a large hydrogen pipeline from north to south, according to a report published by Energiforsk. In the European Hydrogen Backbone project, Gasgrid Finland has envisioned a similar hydrogen pipeline along the Finnish coast. These two planned pipelines will be connected at the Swedish-Finnish border.

“We need to connect the hydrogen supply of Sweden and Finland. If hydrogen in produced with wind energy, hydrogen production varies by weather. By producing hydrogen in a larger geographical area, we reach stable output,” says Johan Sandstedt, Research & Business Developer at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.

Sweden wants to ensure the security of supply because of the scale of its industrial plans. There are no major plans to export hydrogen to other countries. Swedish industry has simply such a big appetite for hydrogen that all hydrogen may be needed to quench its own hunger for H₂ molecules. Sweden does not aim to be a producer of a raw material, but it will process hydrogen for other uses with higher added value.

LTU-perameren_suunniteltu_vetykaasuputki-RISE_Pipeline-Bottenviken_16-9_4K_220204 kopiera.jpg
LTU

BotH2nia is needed on both sides of the Baltic Sea

“RISE, together with the Luleå University of Technology LTU, wants to put BotH2nia on the agenda,” Sandstedt says.

In Sweden, BotH2nia was launched at Svenska Kraftnät's "Kraft 2021" event on 2 September last year.

“Now we want to continue working through dialogue with the business community and the innovation system.”

In the future, the Swedish side of BotH2nia wants to contribute to political dialogue about hydrogen between Sweden and Finland.

“As a research institute, RISE is interested in the research questions related to BotH2nia. We see that there is a need for large-scale system optimization across land borders that includes the entire system — wind power, electricity grid, gas infrastructure, energy storage and more. I see this research work as a collaboration between RISE and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, as well as between the Swedish and Finnish academia,” Sandstedt continues.

LTU-vetytutkimuslaitos-CH2ESS-5.jpg
LTU