The European Commission has eased the conditions for the public funding of the technical transition undertaken by thyssenkrupp Steel to convert its oxygen mills into hydrogen-fuelled DRI plants.
“The EU has approved the legal grounds for the newly adjusted logic of subsidisation of our direction reduction plant,” tk Steel confirms to Kallanish in a statement.
It is believed that the Commission’s concession is linked to the postponement of hydrogen usage in the converted process.
According to EUToday, the original public-funding conditions assumed that sufficient renewable hydrogen would be available at an affordable price. That assumption has not been met on the expected timetable, and it is more likely that the converted mill will have to run on natural gas during an extended transition period.
The Commission has allowed the project to proceed under altered assumptions.
The project in its entirety has an investment budget of €3 billion ($ 3.5 billion), of which two thirds will be publicly funded.
Following the Commission’s nod, the German government must now adjust the formal funding decisions, tk Steel says in its statement.
