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Welcome to Threshold. I'm Amy Martin, and I want to start out here by returning to my stainless steel cook pot. Say hello, cook pot. I introduced you to it a couple of episodes ago at the start of this three part exploration of how, or if we can do industry differently, using the steel industry as a case study. It's just an ordinary, medium sized pot, simple, easy to clean. I use it all the time. I really like this pot. Chances are good that you also have a stainless
steel pot in your kitchen. In fact, I challenge you to try to count the number of steel items you use in one day or even one hour. Your spoon, your car, steel is everywhere. It's one of the most versatile, durable materials in the world, and it makes our lives better in countless ways. But unfortunately, it's also making the climate problem much worse. And that's because the way we're making steel hasn't been cutting edge since 1709. It's an antiquated process that runs on
coal. For every ton of new steel produced, more than 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide are released. Meaning, if we could collect all of the carbon dioxide molecules emitted while making my cook pot and weigh them, they would be almost twice as heavy as the pot itself. This sounds like a problem. Okay, it is a problem, but it's also an opportunity, because if we could decarbonize this one industry, it would knock about 10% off of annual
global CO2 emissions. That is huge. Imagine looking around at all of those steel items you used today knowing that they were made without fossil fuels. And here's the kicker, you don't have to just imagine it. It's possible. In fact, it's happening. A group of companies in northern Sweden is pioneering a new way to produce steel with no carbon emissions. Their goal is to revolutionize the iron and steel industry, and if they're successful, it really could be the start of the kind of
transformational systems change we urgently need. So, I went to go see this new process for myself with two big questions, how does it work, and how can we steal it from them? See what I did there. "Steal it" from them.
The world needs steel, and we can deliver it in a climate friendly way.
It sounds like the future, like spare the environment. And for the next generation.
There's a place for everything, but the environment should be considered throughout that development.
I think, if you haven't started by now, to look at how you're gonna make your transition as a company, you're about to be in trouble.
In this episode, we're going to explore two sides of this potential steel industry revolution, the technical process involved and the cultural context that it's emerging out of. And we're going to start with the technical stuff. What is this new process and how does it actually work? I'm driving through Lulea, Sweden, a city of around 78,000
people located just 70 miles below the Arctic Circle. Lulea is the county seat of Sweden's northernmost county, Norbotten, a huge area that's historically been associated with mountains, reindeer and endless forests of birch and pine. But Norbotten also has huge deposits of the iron needed to make steel, and here in Lulea, the Swedish Steel Corporation, or SSAB, is one of the largest employers.
I'm out here kind of in the industrial edge, and there's factories to the right, and there's a big pipeline going over my head. I arrive at the main office and head toward the gate where I meet my three guides for the day.
Yeah, I'm Nils Edberg, I'm working as a tactical expert on SSAB.
What's up? Asa Backlin, I work with communications at HYBRIT.
Mikael Norlander from Vattenfall and I work with the HYBRIT projects and the colonization of industry in general.
Those names, again, are Nils, Asa, and Mikael. And in just a few minutes, Asa and Mikael are going to take me to see the new HYBRIT pilot plant. That stands for Hydrogen Breakthrough Iron Making Technology, and it really is a potential breakthrough. They're trying to produce steel with no carbon emissions. They call it fossil-free steel. But before we go there, I wanted to see the old process of making steel.
It's happening right in front of us as we walk through the gate in a structure so big and industrial looking, it's almost like a caricature of itself, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book with oversized tubes and shoots and a maze of exterior stairs and walkways blackened with soot. Nils Edberg knows this behemoth inside and out.
Yeah, the big thing we have behind us here is the blast furnace. And in the blast furnace, we produce liquid hot metal that's used for making steel out of iron ore.
So if you're if you're digging iron ore out of the ground, before you can do anything with it, it has to come through something like this.
Yes.
The purpose of this blast furnace is separating iron from the rocks, or ore, it's found in. It's essentially a huge oven that gets hot enough to trigger a chemical reaction that releases the iron from the rock. So iron ore goes in at the top and a purer form of iron, known as pig iron comes out of the bottom as a liquid. The pig iron later gets mixed with other metals, like aluminum or tin to make steel.
Do you want to see the liquid?
I do very much. Nils leads us closer to the action. So we're walking towards the beast. There's like some steamy stuff coming off.
And there you see, that's where the liquid is running down into another of those railway cores.
Oh, wow. Wow. Okay, so that streak of really bright stuff...
That's 1500 degree pig iron.
Okay. Watching a river of thick, red, hot liquid metal pouring out of an enormous black tower is pretty cool. What's less cool are all the carbon emissions being produced in this process, because the key ingredient in the chemical reaction here is coal. The carbon in the coal bonds with the oxygen in the iron ore. And when you put carbon and oxygen together, you get CO2, carbon dioxide and a rapidly warming world.
Just to get to the heart of the matter here the in relation to the HYBRIT project, this whole thing is running on one of the dirtiest and least efficient fossil fuels that we have, coal.
Well, yeah, you can, you can say that it's dirty. This is one of the most efficient blast furnaces around, I can tell you.
As far as blast furnaces, it's good one.
Yeah.
But it's still a blast furnace.
The main part of steel produced today is produced in the blast furnace route, and this is one of the best blast furnace but you're right. We have to use coal in this process and emit a lot of carbon dioxide from from this process, and that's what we want to get rid of.
SSAB is one of three companies that have come together here to figure out how to make iron and steel without carbon emissions. And if they're successful, blast furnaces like this one will become museum pieces, really big museum We say goodbye to Nils and then get into our cars to go see the pieces. new HYBRIT plant. Driving behind Asa's Volvo. Driving through the steelworks. I start to get a sense of how much coal it really takes to run a blast furnace.
Here I'm driving by machines moving coal of different consistencies around, big chunks, little chunks, pulverized, and there's another big, tall factory off in the distance. As Nils Edberg said, SSAB's blast furnaces are more efficient than most, but there's simply no climate friendly way to make steel using coal. According to the company's website, SSAB is responsible for 10% of Sweden's CO2 emissions.
They're the country's largest single emitter, but in a few years, all of these piles of coal I'm looking at might be gone because SSAB is trying to create a new process that runs on a completely different fuel: hydrogen. We come around a bend, and the hybrid plant comes into view. HYBRIT fossil-free steel. It says in English. It's a constellation of tall, silvery rectangles, clearly the shiny new kid on an old coal fired block.
Here's for you. You need to take shoes and put on a vest.
Asa Backlin does a lot of the communications work for the HYBRIT project. She gives me a safety vest and a hard hat to wear. We can't go inside the plant. This was the spring of 2021, and covid restrictions were in place, but as we walk around it, Mikael Nordlander explains how it works. Mikael works for Sweden's state-owned energy company, called Vattenfall. They're one of three partners on the HYBRIT project.
The 50 meter tall building in the back, that's where we mix hydrogen with iron ore to make iron.
Mikael says just like in a blast furnace, the purpose of the HYBRIT plant is to get the iron to separate from the iron ore. The thing that's holding them together is oxygen.
The iron and the oxygen is stuck together real hard. So you need loads of energy to break that, and you basically need to make the oxygen want to jump over to something else. And in the case of the blast furnace, you make the oxygen jump over coal or carbon and then it forms carbon dioxide. And in this case, when we have hydrogen, the oxygen jumps over to the hydrogen and forms H2O, also water. So you eliminate the very root cause of the emissions of the process by doing it this way.
For those of us who haven't thought much about chemistry since high school, let me repeat what Mikael just said. In a blast furnace, you get the oxygen to separate from the iron by using carbon in the form of coal. Carbon plus oxygen leads to CO2, carbon dioxide, thus the climate crisis. But in the HYBRIT plant, the carbon is replaced with hydrogen, and hydrogen plus oxygen leads to H2O: water. That's the byproduct of making steel in this new way.
The hydrogen is basically taking the place of what the coal was doing.
Yeah, that's the kind of glue that rips out the oxygen out of the iron ore.
If all of the steel made in the world today switched to a carbon free process like this one, it would be the equivalent of India and Japan, both among the world's top 10 emitters, going to net zero and then staying there. But the rub here is that there's basically no free hydrogen to be found on Earth. It's all bound up with other elements. Hydrogen is the
smallest atom on the periodic table. It's the lightest of gasses, so light that unless it's bound to some other element, it will float up, escape the atmosphere and disappear into space. So if you want to get some pure hydrogen, which is what they need here at the HYBRIT plant, you have to extract it from something else, like water.
You need energy to break the bond of water into hydrogen and oxygen. That's what we're doing also in this building, using a technology called electrolysis, which is basically a machine where you put in water, and then you put in electricity, and then you split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then you keep the hydrogen for this reaction.
So step one, separate hydrogen from water using electrolysis. Step two, use that hydrogen to pull the oxygen out of iron ore. You end up with a tank full of water and a bunch of iron. No carbon emissions, voila. But if it's so easy to do this, why isn't it happening all over the world? The answer, of course, is that it's not super easy in some important ways. One of the biggest obstacles is energy. You need a whole lot of it to do electrolysis.
So of course, this process wouldn't really make sense if you use fossil fuels to make the electricity to make the electrolysis. But if you have fossil-free electricity going into the making of hydrogen, then it makes sense, and this is exactly what we have here.
Using hydrogen in industrial processes isn't new. It's been used to make fertilizers and chemicals for many years, but almost all of that hydrogen is produced with fossil fuels. In fact, many major oil companies are promoting the use of so called Blue hydrogen, which is produced using methane gas. They're touting it as a win for the climate, but in reality, the carbon emissions involved in
this process are still very high. But that's not what's happening here in Sweden, the energy sector is already very decarbonized. Here. The bulk of the electricity in the country is generated using hydropower, followed by nuclear, wind and biofuels. So the hydrogen produced here is known as green hydrogen, meaning it's essentially carbon-free.
So the river behind us, upstream of that river, we have 4000 megawatts of hydropower plants, which is a lot.
Fossil-free electricity is a huge part of what's making this project work. If you've listened to our whole season, you might be picking up on a theme here. It's what Chris Clack, Jim Williams, Leah Stokes, and other guests have
once you have large quantities of renewable energy to work with, then you can start making true systems change. Then it becomes possible to even imagine projects like this, where a lot of energy is used to make hydrogen, which can then be used as a replacement for coal. Natural gas, composed mostly of methane, can also be used instead of coal to make iron, and that results in lower emissions. But Mikael says they're not aiming for lower CO2. They're aiming for zero.
What we're doing in this concept is basically we're putting together pieces of of technology and building a new system. So how to make hydrogen from electricity that has been known for 100 years, but this is the first time we put it together in a way that completely eliminates the use of coal in the process.
Hearing this got me excited, because it reminded me of what we learned about how the Industrial Revolution took off. That transformation was also sparked by people who made tweaks to existing technologies and experimented with putting systems together in innovative new ways. Climate change solutions aren't going to descend from heaven fully formed. They're going to emerge out of processes full of trial and error, surprises and serendipity, and that's what
this first HYBRIT plant in Lulea is actually for. It's a small pilot plant created for the express purpose of learning.
I mean, this plant will teach us how to set up a more commercial process, which we're planning to do. This is the place where we learn how to do it.
Three companies came together to form HYBRIT: SSAB, the steel-making company, Vattenfall, the energy company, and LKAB, an iron-mining company. They began construction in 2018 with a plan to spend $140 million just on the pilot phase. And one of my biggest questions is, why? Why are these three companies pouring money, effort and time into a new, untested idea like this? Why take the risk?
I think, if you haven't started by now to look at how you're gonna make your transition as a company that causes lots of CO2 emissions, you're about to be in trouble.
Mikael says he thinks the real risk is actually not taking action, not trying to lead the decarbonization process. He says it's clear to all of the partners that the steel industry can either choose to change or be forced to change, and they decided it was in their interest to be proactive. The Swedish steel industry is pretty small in a global context, and they're hoping fossil free steel could be their competitive advantage.
All the way from the start, there has been a real sense of opportunity in this that, whoa, we have lots of good resources. We have clean energy, which is affordable, and if we can reinvent this process, we will have something that is clearly unique, which people all over the globe wants, and we're a tiny player. We're in hard competition with companies all over the world, and the only thing to have a game is to take on some pain in doing this transition, I think.
Could any one of these companies have done it on their own?
No, I don't think so.
Why not?
When you cooperate and you mix those company cultures, those competences, those heritage, something new, I mean, the sum is bigger than the parts, and I think that is crucial for this to make happen. Of course, the important piece is the making of the iron, but it's just a part of an entire system. We're building a new system. So I mean, if we would have been sitting in separate rooms and doing this, it wouldn't simply work.
Cooperation. This is another recurring theme for this season. It seems like no matter where I start, I keep landing on it. Mikael says these three companies essentially had to collaborate because they needed each other in order to synchronize their investments and activities and to spread out
the risks involved. And he says they also needed each other to be able to think really big, to go beyond reducing emissions here and there around the margins and focus on truly transforming how iron and steel are made, all the way from the mine to the finished product.
That I think is really the way to go, in order to do as good an efficient system as possible.
I think some people would hear, three big companies working together, that sounds instead of like cooperation, that sounds like a nightmare of, you know, competition, like you were talking about blending cultures that maybe don't blend, people getting, you know, territorial. And was there some of that kind of thing to work through, or is there still?
It has been, it still is, and it will probably in the future. I mean, cooperation like this is not easy. We're trying to do something really disruptive and trying to do it really fast, and what we need to do is basically to cooperate in a way that we act like a small startup, but at the same time use the big resources of being a big company, and the governance challenge of that is quite immense, to be honest. It is, it is actually sometimes trickier than the technology part, I would say.
I would imagine, I mean, because you can, you can make machines do what you want them to, but people are much less obedient.
Yeah, and creating that culture, which is a mix of force of big companies and the agility of small companies that that takes some contemplation.
It strikes me that this is, in a way, sort of an analogy for the entire problem of climate change, that we have to be able to think with much more agility, but with massive resources. You're nodding.
Yeah.
Take a bold idea, develop it collaboratively, and then infuse it with the resources and power of existing institutions. That's what we need to do in all kinds of contexts in order to solve the climate crisis. And like Mikael said, it's not easy, but this project demonstrates that it's
possible. In August 2021, just a few months after I visited HYBRIT, they produced the world's first fossil free steel here and delivered it to another Swedish company, Volvo, which used it to produce the first vehicle made of fossil free steel. It's a huge achievement, and there's more to come. A new, bigger hybrid plant is now going up in another northern Swedish town called Gällivare, and that's where we're headed after the break.
Hey everybody, this is Erika Janik, Threshold's Managing Editor. Did you know that we have a Threshold newsletter? Our newsletter is a great way to stay connected to Threshold between seasons, find out what we're thinking about and what we're reading, listening to and watching. So subscribe to the Threshold newsletter today using the link in the show notes or on our website, thresholdpodcast.org.
What do you think defines Norrboten as a region? What are the defining characteristics?
I think the people here, they are strong. They are used to have ups and downs. It comes times in, bad times, good times. So the people, they are used and they are open minded. If you have a work, then you are welcome. Everyone must work, then you are like one of us.
Welcome back to Threshold. I'm Amy Martin, and I'm talking with Marita Johansson. She owns a hostel in Gällivare, a city of around 17,000 people, just north of the Arctic Circle that's home to one of the biggest iron mines in Europe. Now that we've got a basic understanding of the technical side of fossil-free steel, I want to turn our
attention to the human side. How ordinary people here in northern Sweden are being affected by this movement toward a new, greener version of industry, and how they're helping to bring those changes about. Is there something going on up here that can be replicated in other places, looking to be part of the green transition? Because the story here is actually much
bigger than HYBRIT. Another company, called H2 Green Steel, is also planning to build a huge hydrogen fueled steel plant in this region, a little further south in the city of Skelleftea, a company called Northvolt is building a big new battery factory that aims to make batteries that are 95% recyclable. The availability of inexpensive renewable energy is definitely a major factor in this. Also an abundance of
minerals and metals. More than 90% of the iron ore produced in the European Union comes from Sweden, and one quarter of that comes from the area around Gällivare. But energy and iron can't accomplish anything on their own. It's what people choose to do with those things that matters. So what's the secret sauce? Why are these new green industries taking root here in Norrbotten, Sweden's northernmost county, which has just 250,000 people and about the same number of reindeer?
It's a lot of sporty people. They love the snow. They love to ski. They love the nature. They love to go out, hunting, fishing. They are always out.
Marita grew up here, and she says people in this area are very connected to nature. When they aren't working in the mine, they're out playing in the snow. But even though this is a rural place, it's still very globally connected. I'd heard Marita speaking other languages with guests in the hostel, not just English, which almost all Swedes can speak fluently, but other languages too. How many different languages do you speak?
I speak Finnish, English, of course Swedish, French and some Russian, some Italian. You must learn some, some different languages when you have a hostel and maybe I have a talent for for languages.
It sounds like it. Marita may indeed have a talent for languages, but her polyglotism isn't nearly as unusual here as it would be in a small city in the rural United States. Although the stereotype is that this country is full of nothing but tall blonde people, the reality is 20% of people living in Sweden were born in other countries. For comparison's sake, that number
is between 13 and 14% for the United States and the UK. And this internationalism may be a background factor in helping to open people's minds to the transition away from fossil fuels, culturally and economically, there's a sense that the key to future success is a global mindset. Even if you're living in a rural town, working in an iron mine.
I got my first kid as I was very young, and it's a safe place to grow up here. So I stayed and I I like it here. I like the snow.
Lina Nystrom also grew up in Gällivare, and she works as a production coordinator at the iron mine, which is owned by the company called LKAB. She joined the company 12 years ago when she was just 20 years old.
I needed a job. I needed money. I want to move out from home, so it was a good start. And I like their policy. I like how they treat their staff and everything.
Because of covid, I wasn't able to go underground to see the mine for myself, so I asked Lina to tell me what it's like. I assumed people went down into the mine in elevators, but I was wrong. You drive into it, she says, and there are 600 kilometers of roads down there. That's about 370 miles. That's how huge this mine is.
The first impression for new people mostly be like they're afraid, maybe for the roof. But it's no danger. They are shaking it every day.
Lina says there are multiple levels to the mine, and some of them have offices and workshops in them. There's even a restaurant down there. And instead of workers with pick axes, they use dynamite to get the iron ore out.
Every day, at midnight, they shoot off with dynamite.
Oh.
And they then they load it the day after.
Every day at midnight. How long has that been a ritual?
iIn my forever.
Wow, so do people, can you ever feel it above ground like, Oh, there they go with the dynamite.
Yes, all the time.
Really?
And when you sleep away, you miss it.
I think for most people living on top of an iron mine that's getting regularly blasted with dynamite doesn't sound terribly relaxing, but for people in Gällivare,, that small earthquake every night is the sound and feel of home and also
job security. The iron that gets blasted out of the tunnels of this massive mine deep below our feet, is turned into steel products that get used around the world, and soon it'll be fed into the new commercial scale, fossil free HYBRIT plant, which will be built here at LKAB. Do you think you'd like to work in a new plant?
Yes.
Why?
I like to learn new things and it's exciting because it's new. I think it's gonna be a big deal.
The idea of something being a big deal here is especially meaningful when you understand that there's a long history of extracting resources from the north of Sweden, while money and power stay concentrated in the South, in cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg. But now, thanks to projects like HYBRIT, there's a sense that the regional dynamics are shifting, and people like Lina have the opportunity to be part of something truly innovative.
It sounds like the future, like spare the environment and for for the next generation. It's new and it's for good sake. So I want to be a part of that.
Like it feels like a place you can believe in the work.
Yes.
Lina believes in the work and in the company she works for, LKAB, and she's not unusual in this regard, labor relations are generally very good in Sweden, thanks, in no small part to the strength of unions. More than 65% of the population is unionized here, and that's part of what has led to a whole slew of policies that make Sweden the envy of the
world for workers. Just to hit the highlights, universal free healthcare, five weeks of paid vacation a year, although many people get six, and that's on top of a long list of national holidays. Parents in Sweden get 480 days of paid leave per child. Yes, you heard that, right. 16 months paid. If you get sick or lose your job, you can tap into a deep well of support. And if you're working and decide you want to go advance your education, no problem. Your job is guaranteed
to be waiting for you when you're done. Oh yeah, and college is free. With all of these policies in place and more that I don't have time to mention, it's not terribly surprising that workers like Lena have a positive feeling about their jobs. Another thing that helps to keep the good vibes going is income equality. Most CEOs of big American companies make hundreds of times more than their average worker.
In Sweden, the pay gap is much, much less. According to one study from 2017 the ratio of CEO to worker pay in the US was 312 to one. In Sweden, it was 40 to one. It sounds like you feel pretty loyal to the company, like the company is a good employer to have.
I think so. For me, it has been I like it there, because all of my colleagues are, we are are so driven to do it the right way. So everyone work at the same goal.
And when you say the right way, can you tell me more what you mean by that?
We want to do improvement for the environment. So I just want to be a part of that.
I'm talking with Lina in the kitchen of another LKAB worker, Peter Knekta. He's been working for the company for 16 years, and he agrees with Lina that LKAB is trying to reduce their environmental impact in many ways, but he also has no illusions about the nature of the business they're in.
I believe that mine is never good for their environment. It makes big wounds and some pollution also, of course, it's a big industry.
And some of those wounds will take a really long time to heal. Peter says he'll show me what he means over in the village right next to Gällivare, called Malmberget. We hop into his truck and on the way, we chit chat about what he likes to do for fun around here.
Yeah, sometimes I go hunting with the skis.
What do you hunt?
Mostly birds. But I'm not that great hunter, so if I depended on that, I would be really skinny.
We arrive in Malmberget and Peter drives us up to the edge of a huge crater in what used to be the center of town, surrounded by a tall fence. All the mining activity around here has made the land unstable, and for decades, it's been collapsing in various places. This hole in the middle of town has been slowly growing since the 1950s, but there are still some lights on in the houses nearby.
And I guess some people are still living here.
It feels like it'd be kind of surreal to live next to this big hole that's like slowly eating its way toward you.
Yeah, it does.
It sounds a little scary.
I don't know scary. It's a part of mining.
Historically, Malmberget was its own distinct community with its own identity and its own small town pride. Now it's in a strange liminal state on its way to becoming a ghost town, but not quite there yet. On one street, we see several homes with cars in the driveways. On the next, it's nothing but big empty apartment buildings and vacant lots where houses have been picked up, loaded onto trucks and moved to safer ground, over in Gällivare.
Here, we have a graveyard. One old graveyard, but they have to move it, I guess.
That has to be moved too.
Yeah, everything here.
Malmberget became a town because of the mining industry, and in the not too distant future, it will cease to exist because of the impacts of that same industry. It's more than halfway gone already. Do people have resentment about that?
Yes, some of them have. They are feeling it's too bad, but for me, it's a sign of the future. We're making a new town.
So industry in Sweden does have a shadow side, just like it does in Gary, Indiana and kind of everywhere. Like Peter said, not everyone here is happy about the loss of Malmberget, and there's plenty of debate about how the move is being handled. And there are major social justice issues connected to industrial development here too. Sweden was officially neutral during World War Two, and a lot of the iron
mined here during that period was sent to Nazi Germany. And all of Norrbotten, in fact, much of present day Sweden is part of Sapmi, the homeland of the Sami people. For hundreds of years, the Swedish Church and crown centered in the south, treated sapme as a colony. Sami people were often forced to work in the mines, and their reindeer herding lands have been fragmented by roads, railways, towns, and of course, the mines themselves. And those controversies are not over.
There's currently a new mine being planned near Jokkmokk, a major center of Sami culture, and it's being met with strong opposition from many Sami people and others. So it's not like the iron and steel industries in Sweden developed in some blissful, conflict free context, and I think that's actually what makes Sweden's current situation feel especially important to
study. The story here is not that industry is perfect. It's that even with the conflicts and controversies, somehow a culture has emerged here in which everyone from executives to workers are invested in trying to make industry better. Peter and I leave Malmberget and drive the few minutes back over to Gällivare. It's cold and dark and snowing, but there are a lot of people out and about. The community feels lively. LKAB is contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to help with
the transition away from Malmberget. They're working with the local government to help move historically significant buildings and to build new ones. There's a new sports center in town where some kids are having hockey practice, and we check out the new "Kunskaphuset," a beautiful new combination high school and adult learning center.
I guess that's a part of the future. We're building a lot.
And I imagine all this moving and building and everything that has to be creating some jobs.
Yes, a lot of jobs. And believe in the future, when you are putting that much money into it.
Right. You're basically, you're saying, we're not gonna let this place die.
No.
Seeing how LKAB is handling this transition, I couldn't help but think about Gary, Indiana. How different could things be there if the government and industry invested in it like this? What could the future of Gary look like if companies like US Steel decided to go all in on fossil fuel reduction and engage their workers and the community as a
whole in that project. Because just like in Gällivare, there are plenty of people in Gary who want to believe in the future of their community, but it's much harder to maintain that belief when you have to battle constantly to get corporations to follow basic environmental laws. When you have to collect your children's teeth to get them tested for lead poisoning. That kind of disregard for the health of the community is
unthinkable here. There's a sense that everyone is basically pulling in the same direction, even when they disagree, and that makes it easier to see shades of gray, in your employer, in your government and in yourself.
I'm a consumer, so I have a snowmobile, I have a car, I have telephones and everything. So we gotta take the metals from somewhere, and I guess we got it here, so...
Yeah.
And the same with the waste, if we are going to consume, if we like to have lots of stuff, then you gotta take care of the waste also, but you can do a lot to make it even better.
The world needs steel, and we can deliver it in a climate friendly way, and to be in a company that's evolving, that's developing with people who are prepared for change, and it's so interesting.
Anders Lindbergh is the press manager for LKAB. He's showing me around the mining area, the above ground parts that are open to visitors. Like Lina and Peter, he's excited about the hybrid project and the general direction the company's taking.
I liked working for LKAB when I started in 2005 but that feeling has really grown now with the green transition. It's really good feeling at the moment.
We drive past giant structures connected by conveyor belts and pipelines. It looks very much like the old version of industry, but Anders says LKAB is transitioning all vehicles and machinery in the mine to run on electricity. They're aiming to remove carbon emission from every step of the iron making process.
We want to do it fossil free. That's the key to have the entire process fossil free. So our customers could say that they have fossil free steel.
But all of these processes take energy, Ander says, in the future, up to 1/3 of Sweden's total electric energy production will be needed here at LKAB.
For the next perhaps 10 to 15 years, we have enough energy here in northern Sweden to start the first stages of our transition, but after that we have to have new energy sources. And of course, when we can't export energy to south of Sweden, they will have to have new energy sources. So this is a huge question. That's something for for everyone in Sweden to to be a part of and decide.
In the US, it's not uncommon to hear people say, "Why should we try to lower our carbon emissions when China is burning so much coal?" even though the United States is still the world's second biggest emitter, and historically, we've produced more greenhouse gasses than any other nation. Here in Sweden, they're already one of the lowest carbon emitting countries in the developed world. They're leading the pack,
but the attitude here is still, how can we do better? I don't think Swedes are inherently more virtuous than anyone else, and I don't think they think that either, this mindset just seems normal to them, and that's what I'm so curious about. How did this become the dominant paradigm here? I want to figure it out so we can bottle it and share it around the world. I asked Anders what he would put in that bottle.
I think that's two main ingredients. It's knowledge and it's motivation. Knowledge about climate change, about our processes, about what's possible to do, and then motivation. Why should we do this? You have to believe in climate change. You have to believe in science. And that's something we do with LKAB. I mean, our operations are grounded, though, in scientific results, so not believing in the science when they say, Hey, you have to do something about the
climate change. Of course we have, I'm sure we have people who say, I don't believe in that. You know, CO2 with just the hopes. I'm sure we have those, but they're not that many, and they have to adapt, because LKAB is doing this anyway.
I asked Mikael Nordlander this question as well, and he also talked about the strong sense of shared motivation. He said the foundation of this whole endeavor is that these three industrial companies want to be part of the solution. And starting from that mindset, they came to see the need to get off fossil fuels, not as a burden, but an opportunity.
I would hate to have a job that doesn't make any difference. In that context, I think it's the most important question we have. So on the personal level, I think I'm really, really lucky to have the chance to work with this. I mean, it's probably the most exciting thing you can work on, on the spot of the planet where you have the best circumstances to do it. So that gives me a lot of satisfaction. It would be more when we get this up in scale.
HYBRIT is leading the transition in the steel industry, but it's not alone. There are steel companies all over the world, including in the United States, that are also working on reducing or eliminating fossil fuels in their plants. And of course, this transition is what we need to do in all of our industries and communities and homes. So
what can we learn from what's going on here in Sweden? Well, one thing is that having lots of carbon free energy available is a great way to spark innovation, but the social and cultural infrastructure. Here are big factors too. Sweden has invested in the education that leads to the knowledge and motivation that Anders and Mikael talked about. And they've prioritized
equality, which helps to build a culture of cooperation. Their strong social safety net gives people confidence that they'll stay secure in the midst of change, and fosters an attitude of we're all in this together, not in a particularly sentimental way, just as a matter of fact. My well being is tied up with your well being, and we're all tied to the well being of the planet. And that makes me think of Carl Sandburg. We named this trio of episodes about the steel industry,
"Prayers of Steel" after his poem by that name. In the first stanza, he seems to be pleading to become a steel crowbar that can pry loose old walls and lift and loosen old foundations. But at the end of the poem, he's praying to become a force of connection. He writes, beat me and hammer me into a steel spike, drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together. Take red hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders. Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights
into white stars. We've destroyed a lot through our industrial processes. We've caused real harm to the Earth and to each other, but maybe under the pressure of the climate crisis, we can reinvent industry and learn how to channel our creativity and power into the project of Helping to hold the world and our communities together.
Hi, I'm Miles from Jackson, Wyoming. Reporting for this season of Threshold was funded by the Park Foundation, the High Stakes Foundation, the Pleiades Foundation, NewsMatch, the Llewellyn Foundation, Montana Public Radio and listeners. This work depends on people who believe in it and choose to support it, people like you. Join our community at thresholdpodcast.org.
This episode of Threshold was produced and reported by me, Amy Martin, with help from Nick Mott, Erika Janik and Sam Moore. The rest of the Threshold team is Caysi Simpson, Deneen Weiske, Eva Kalea and Shola Lawal. Our intern is Emery Veilleux. Thanks to Sarah sneath, Sally Deng, Maggy Contreras, Hana Carey, Dan Carreno, Luca Borghese, Julia Barry, Kara Cromwell, Katie deFusco, Caroline Kurtz and Gabby Piamonte. Special thanks to Joe Loviska and Ulf Nilsson. The music is by Todd Sickafoose.