Google has agreed to support Swedish start-up Stegra in green hydrogen steelmaking.
Spread across 270 hectares in Boden, northern Sweden, Stegra’s facility will incorporate iron and steelmaking with a 740MW hydrogen plant. Using green hydrogen in its steelmaking results in the facility producing near-zero emissions.
Google will purchase environmental attribute certificates (EACs) from Stegra for a volume of up to 91,000 tonnes of steel for the first year, with the possibility of increasing this volume.
This book-and-claim system allows Google to claim the environmental attributes of lower-emission steel separately from the physical product. So while the tech giant won’t purchase the physical steel, buying EACs effectively helps it offset the carbon emissions from its own operations, including the construction of data centres. It estimates that this type of market mechanism can reduce data centre infrastructure emissions by up to 40%.
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