The crucial decarbonization project of a part of ArcelorMittal’s steel head in Gijón is entering critical deadlines while waiting for the European Commission to promptly grant its authorization for the volume of public aid requested a year and a half ago: 500 million for an investment which will amount to 1,000 million in its first phase to replace the blast furnace “A” (now stopped due to low demand for steel) with a hybrid electric furnace and another direct reduction of iron ore (DRI). The aid is justified by the need to reduce CO2 emissions as a community imperative (only in this way can the steel industry survive in the EU) and by the high risk and cost of implementing clean technologies that are not yet sufficiently mature or proven.
ArcelorMittal has requested 3,000 million aid for four of its European sites in Spain, Belgium, Germany and France. This high volume of subsidies requested from the recovery funds is contributing to a much more detailed and demanding scrutiny by the community authorities due to its eventual impact on the free market and the distortions of competition that could arise.
Added to this is the fact that many other companies in the steel sector have their own CO2 emission reduction projects in the pipeline in any of their variants: direct carbon reduction, hydrogen- and electricity-based metallurgy, circular economy, smart use of carbon, integration of processes, recovery of carbon and capture and storage of CO2.
Altogether, and according to the European steel employers’ association (Eurofer), more than 60 carbon reduction projects are scheduled in the EU (although they increase month by month), which will require the mobilization of 85,000 million euros to reduce CO2 emissions by 81, 5 million tons in 2030.
The delay in receiving the European go-ahead for its plans in Gijón worries the ArcelorMittal leadership because of the fear that, if it continues to be delayed, it will not be able to meet its own schedule, and even more so because there is a risk of a high simultaneous accumulation of projects that go beyond the existing offer of engineering specialized in these technologies to develop the projects that are intended. This was one of the reasons why the Asturian plan was presented with great diligence to the European Commission in July 2021: it was about anticipating the feared traffic jam. All the projects underway in the EU aspire to be executed before 2030, according to Eurofer, given that the schedule for the removal of free CO2 rights, already agreed upon by the European institutions, is a Damocles sword for the sector. And to this is added in Asturias that the blast furnace “A” expires its useful life in 2024