Emden, Lower Saxony

National government responsible for climate and industrial policy, including funding programs for decarbonization and hydrogen infrastructure.

Steel production

energy

Hydrogen produced from renewable electricity sources, considered a critical component for hydrogen's long-term credibility as a clean fuel.

Hydrogen‑based direct reduction of iron (DRI), combined with electric arc furnaces (EAF), is a low‑carbon steel‑production route in which iron ore is reduced to sponge iron using a reducing gas – initially natural gas and increasingly green hydrogen – rather than coal and coke in a blast furnace.[9][10] Salzgitter’s SALCOS® project is implementing such hydrogen‑ready direct‑reduction plants and EAFs to replace its conventional blast‑furnace/basic‑oxygen‑furnace route, with the aim of cutting CO₂ emissions by up to 95 percent once predominantly green hydrogen is used.[6][9]

Hydrogen transport and cavern storage technologies enable large volumes of hydrogen to be moved from coastal production sites to industrial consumers and buffered over time, which is essential given the variability of renewable generation and the high continuous demand of steel plants.[7][8] EWE’s “Clean Hydrogen Coastline” concept combines pipelines, repurposed gas infrastructure and underground salt‑cavern storage to create a flexible hydrogen backbone in northwest Germany that can feed projects like SALCOS® while integrating into the future national hydrogen core network.[7][8]