Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership

Green Growth Summit 2026: Helena Norrman, Executive Vice President, SSAB

Duration: 3:19 544 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Helena Norrman, Executive Vice President of SSAB, asserts that there is no inherent trade-off between sustainability and competitiveness within the steel industry. The company is currently investing over five billion euros to transform its production assets in Sweden, a move designed to simultaneously enhance market competitiveness and achieve fossil-free operations. This transformation relies heavily on a stable, predictable, and strong policy framework at the European level, with the existing Emissions Trading System (ETS) serving as an effective foundation for future climate policies. Norrman emphasizes that regulatory predictability is crucial for large-scale investments, noting that while investors can tolerate market or technological uncertainties, they struggle significantly with unpredictable rules of the game. The strategic investment plan involves two distinct sites in Sweden, each targeting different aspects of modernization and decarbonization. In Oxelösund, the company is replacing its current blast furnace with an electric arc furnace to focus primarily on decarbonization efforts. Meanwhile, a major project in Luleå in northern Sweden involves constructing a completely new steel mill utilizing advanced technology that is both fossil-free and capable of producing more sophisticated products for customers. This dual approach ensures that SSAB achieves three critical goals at once: deep decarbonization, product leadership, and improved cost efficiency. By electrifying their processes, the company aims to reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels and secure access to clean energy at acceptable prices within Europe. Access to affordable, fossil-free electricity is identified as a decisive factor for the viability of the European steel industry's transformation. Norrman points out that many European steel companies face significant hurdles in going fossil-free because they lack access to green energy at reasonable costs. In contrast, SSAB benefits from having production facilities only in Sweden and Finland, two nations with established access to competitively priced renewable energy. This geographical advantage provides a strong starting point for the Nordic steel sector, allowing it to lead the transformation while highlighting that widespread availability of such energy across all European member states is essential for the entire industry to remain financially viable and competitive in the future.

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First of all, for SSAB, there is no trade-off between sustainability and competitiveness. Uh we are investing more than 5 billion euros in transforming our production assets in Sweden as we speak. And and that will make us more competitive, but it will also make our production fossil free. Uh so it is there there is no trade-off, but it's very important in order to get that to work to have a stable and predictable and strong policy framework uh on European level. And that means that the ETS system that has served us well uh and that is very effective needs to be the basis of the climate policy. Uh and predictability is the key. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game. I'm a big football fan, and you just don't do that. In order for companies to make large investments, and we are talking about large-scale investments here. Uh you need predictability, and especially you need regulatory predictability. Because if you look at the investors, they can live with market uncertainty, they can live with technology uncertainty, but it is very difficult for them to handle regulatory uncertainty. So you need a stable framework and stable rules of the game. SSAB is currently investing more than 5 billion euros in our Swedish production system, and that has it is and it's on two sites. One is in Oxelösund, where we make our more special products, and there we're only replacing uh the current blast furnace with electric arc furnace. So that is about decarbonization. Then we have our big investment in Luleå up in the north of Sweden, where we're actually building a completely new steel mill, and we're investing into new technology that is both fossil free, but will also enable us to make more advanced products for our customers, and to be more cost-effective and efficient. So it's really it's about decarbonization, it's about product product leadership, and it's about cost. You get all the three at the same time. So, electrification in Europe is very important. And And first and foremost, we need to move away from the dependency on fossil fuels that come from other parts of the world. We also need access to clean and fossil-free energy at acceptable prices in Europe. And looking at this from a from an SSAB perspective today, maybe it has less impact. But if you look at the steel industry today, for instance, it is very difficult for many steel companies in Europe to transform and go fossil-free because they don't have access to fossil-free energy at a reasonable price. Looking at electrification and access to fossil-free energy across Europe, for us at SSAB, we only have production in Sweden and Finland, which are two countries with access to fossil-free energy at a reasonable and and competitive cost. So, we have a good starting point. And that's also a reason that steel companies in in the Nordics are moving ahead with their transformation because we have the prerequisites. For the European steel industry, it is very important to have this access to fossil-free and competitively priced electricity across all of the member states in Europe because otherwise it will not be financially viable for them to transform.