Professor: Climate-smart when Stegra wants to import natural gas by truck?

Last year, the increasingly troubled steel project Stegra was denied its application for funding from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, partly citing that the company would become a major emitter of carbon dioxide. Now that it needs large amounts of natural gas, it is to be transported long distances by truck.

An appendix to the company’s permit application from December 2021 shows that at full production, Stegra would become one of the largest consumers of natural gas in Sweden.

“The energy consumption at full production is estimated at about 20 TWh of electricity, 2.3 TWh of natural gas, and 0.3 TWh supplied as coal injection,” the document states, and in a table, the company estimates the annual consumption of natural gas at 170,000 tons.

“It is not possible to supply the planned facility with natural gas via pipeline, so the gas will be transported to the facility by road or rail. The gas will be stored on site in tanks and distributed via pipelines to the parts of production where it is used,” according to the permit application.

The plan was for up to 32 trucks per day to deliver natural gas from Tornio in Finland to Boden. Climate-smart? asks Christian Sandström, Associate Professor at the Jönköping International Business School and Docent at Chalmers University of Technology, in a column for Affärsvärlden.

Logistical challenges

Full production at Stegra is several years in the future — if there is any production at all, that is. Thirty-two trucks and 170,000 tons represent the maximum level applied for.

“The figures should therefore perhaps mainly be seen as yet another example of the company’s logistical challenges,” Sandström states.

The climate is sacrificed

The plan also includes importing iron ore from blacklisted Vale in Brazil, and it was recently announced that a Spanish company will process some of the steel — in Spain.

“It is well known from other so-called green initiatives that the climate sometimes sanctifies the means. But even the climate seems capable of being sacrificed on the altar of climate,” Sandström concludes.