We are active

The Saarland steel industry is firmly committed to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and wants to manufacture high-quality steel products in a sustainable manner. We present the strong rating of our sustainability strategy by CDP as well as our current innovation projects and feasibility studies for further C02 reduction.

SHS achieves impressive score in the Carbon Disclosure Project sustainability rankings

SHS – Stahl-Holding-Saar – with Dillinger and Saarstahl – participated for the first time last year in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an internationally recognized rating system, and achieved a superior result with an overall grade of A-. Saarstahl had already successfully participated in 2018.

The Carbon Disclosure Project aims to make transparent all of the positive and negative ways that companies, cities and regions impact the environment. CDP is an international non-profit organization founded by academics and scientists from the fields of economics and sustainability. Once a year it collects data voluntarily provided by companies and organizations along with information about their climate strategies, and then compiles a sustainability ranking.

The CDP’s scoring placed the SHS Group into its top assessment group: Climate Change Leadership. Only a fraction of participating companies achieve this rank, which means we have positioned ourselves very well, especially within the “metal smelting, refining & forming” sector. Competitors such as Tata Steel, ArcelorMittal, Kobe Steel and Nippon Steel performed comparably. Our result from our first participation as SHS is only available to our customers upon request.

Our successful participation in the CDP rating and our good results reflect our positioning with respect to sustainability and climate protection.

Partnerships for green steel

The use of hydrogen in steel production is a key factor in reducing carbon emissions. Together with multiple cooperation partners who are world leaders in their respective fields of activity, SHS – Stahl-Holding-Saar has initiated feasibility studies to further explore the use of hydrogen in steel production.

Conversion of iron ore pellets into low-carbon sponge iron

The first feasibility study is examining the conversion of iron ore pellets using green hydrogen into hot briquetted iron (HBI), which is sponge iron that has been pressed into briquettes. Partners in the project along with SHS are the international mining company Rio Tinto and the engineering company Paul Wurth.

The partners will perform the study in Canada due to the access there to low-cost hydropower and proximity to key markets in Europe and North America. Using green hydrogen to convert high-grade iron ore pellets into the low-carbon iron-carrier medium HBI and then melting this down in an electric furnace can significantly reduce carbon emissions from steelmaking. The feasibility study is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

Hydrogen-based DRI plant

SHS has been working since early last year together with Liberty Steel, a global steel and mining company, as well as with Paul Wurth to study the technical and economic feasibility of an industrial-scale hydrogen-based steel plant. A memorandum of understanding has been signed to explore development of a 2-million-ton direct reduced iron (DRI) plant in France that would include integrated hydrogen electrolysis and have a capacity of 1 GW.

SHS innovation project H2SYNgas: part of a cross-border green hydrogen economy

Dillinger and Saarstahl are taking a further step on the path to green steel with their H2SYNgas innovation project. The aim here is to develop a technology with which a synthesis gas generated from the company’s own process gases is enriched with hydrogen and then used as a reducing agent in the blast furnace – thus reducing the use of coke and avoiding carbon emissions.

The H2SYNgas project has been submitted, together with other projects of primarily Saarland-based cooperation partners, to the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy for IPCEI funding.

The long-term goal of the individual projects is to establish a cross-border, green hydrogen economy in Saarland, France and Luxembourg. In addition to SHS – Stahl-Holding-Saar, participants include the STEAG energy company, plant manufacturer Siemens Energy, grid operator Creos Deutschland, and regional city transport operator Saarbahn.

(Stahlinform 1/2021)