Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
In the end, economic reality prevails. Green steel has no future in Germany, regardless of how much funding may continue to flow through the channels of the green subsidy machine: At Germany’s overregulated, energy-policy-driven and increasingly sidelined industrial location, industrial production is becoming less and less profitable.
That ArcelorMittal, one of the green economy’s poster boys, threw in the towel at the end of the week and announced that it would end steel production at its Duisburg site is the latest painful blow to the proponents of the green transformation ideology.
From October next year, ArcelorMittal will completely close the Duisburg steelworks and will also cease operating the billet rolling mill, where around 800 employees are currently employed. Around 550 employees could be affected by the closure. Only the wire rod mill is to remain. The semi-finished products required to operate it will in future be sourced from other ArcelorMittal sites and external producers.
The news carries a double weight: That green steel — meaning steel produced through a production route in which hydrogen is used instead of carbon as the reducing agent — would not be able to compete in the face of significantly lower production costs at other locations is hardly s
