ArcelorMittal Bremen receives $10M funding for Hybit hydrogen project

ArcelorMittal steel plant in Bremen, Germany, together with German energy company EWE AG and its subsidiary Swb AG has received funding of over €10 million from the state of Bremen.

As part of the Hybit (Hydrogen for Bremen’s industrial transformation) project, the three companies will use the funding to build an electrolysis plant. The state funding is around half of the total investment budget.

The project includes the construction of a 12 MW electrolysis plant that will use renewable energy to produce green hydrogen. The electrolysis plant capacity will gradually increase up to 300 MW at the later stages. The construction works on the plant is expected to start this year and is likely to be completed next year, H2 Bulletin understands.

In the first phase, ArcelorMittal Flachstahl Deutschland will replace two blast furnaces in Bremen and Eisenhüttenstadt to replace the technology for the production of 3.6 million tonnes/year steel with a process with a direct reduction system and a subsequent electric arc furnace. The complete conversion of this production to green hydrogen will result in savings of over 5 million tonnes/year of CO2. ArcelorMittal has submitted further applications for subsidies as part of the IPCEI program for large-scale hydrogen projects.

Swb and EWE will be responsible for building the electrolysis system in the joint venture Hydrogen Bremen GmbH at the Bremen-Mittelbüren power station.

Reiner Blaschek, CEO of ArcelorMittal Flachstahl Germany, said, “We will use the first hydrogen in the existing plants, in the next stage the use of new production technologies will follow so that we can produce completely climate-neutral steel in Bremen by the mid-30s. For this, a further expansion of the hydrogen capacity will be necessary.”