Martin Pei on the next steps in building a fossil-free value chain
Martin Pei was one of the initiators when the HYBRIT project started up in 2016. As such, he knows more about it than almost anyone.
”When we started, there were a lot of people wondering ”is this going to work?” – technically, economically, are there going to be a market for fossil-free steel? In the last couple of years we have shown that the technology works, economically it works and we have become more and more confident that this is the right way to go”, he says after taking part in one of our Deep talks, ”Fossil-free steel and beyond – enabling a carbon-free world economy”, as part of Expo 2020.
The main challenge now has moved from ”is there a market” to ”can we provide enough fossil-free steel quickly enough” and LKAB and SSAB have both made the decision to speed up their respective transformations. SSAB have launched a plan to move to fossil-free production 15 years earlier than previously intended. This places huge demands on the pace of, for example, permit processes and political decisions connected to elecricity, says Martin:
”For us, it’s mainly the availability of electricity, especially the transmission lines. That’s setting the timeline for our tranformation”
Learn more about Martin Peis views on the transformation in the interview above, or learn more about the transition to fossil-free steel making by watching the entire Deep talk here.