SEASON FOUR | Time to 1.5

Prayers of Steel III

OPENING TAG: Joe Loviska

Welcome to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, I want to start out here by returning to my stainless steel cookpot. I introduced you to it a couple of episodes ago at the start of this three-part exploration or how—or if—we can do industry differently, using the steel industry as a case study. Say hello cookpot...(plonk plonk). It's just an ordinary, medium-sized pot, simple, easy to clean, I use it all the time, I really like this pot.

Chances are good that you also have a stainless steel pot in your kitchen. In fact, I challenge you to try to count the number of steel items you use in one day—or even one hour. Your spoon. Your car.  Steel is everywhere. It's one of the most versatile, durable materials in the world, and it makes our lives better in countless ways.

But unfortunately, it's also making the climate problem much worse. And that's because the way we're making steel hasn't been cutting edge since 1709—it's an antiquated process that runs on coal. For every ton of new steel produced, more than one-point-eight tons of carbon dioxide are released. Meaning, if we could collect all of the carbon dioxide molecules emitted while making my cookpot and weigh them, they would be almost twice as heavy as the pot itself. 

This sounds like a problem. OK, it is a problem. But it's also an opportunity. Because if we could decarbonize this one industry, it would knock about 10% off of annual CO2 emissions. That's huge. Imagine looking around at all of those steel items you used today, and knowing they were made without fossil fuels.

And here's the kicker: you don't have to just imagine it. It's possible. In fact, it's happening. A group of companies in northern Sweden is pioneering a new way to produce steel with no carbon emissions. Their goal is to revolutionize the iron and steel industry, and if they're successful, it really could be the start of the kind of transformational systems change we urgently need. So I went to go see this new process for myself with two big questions: how does it work, and how can we steal it from them.

See what I did there? “Steel” it from them.

INTRO

In this episode we're going to explore two sides of this potential steel industry revolution: the technical process involved and the cultural context that it's emerging out of. And we're going start with the technical stuff: what is this new process, and how does it actually work.

AMBI: driving

I'm driving through Luleå, Sweden a city of around 78,000 people, located just 70 miles below the Arctic Circle. Luleå is the county seat of Sweden's northernmost county, Norrbotten. a huge area that's historically been associated with mountains, reindeer, and endless forests of birch and pine. But Norbotten also has huge deposits of the iron needed to make steel, and here in Luleå, the Swedish Steel Corporation, or SSAB, is one of the largest employers.

AMY: I'm out here kind of in the industrial edge and there's factories to the right and there's a big pipeline going over my head.

I arrive at the main office and head toward the gate, where I meet my three guides for the day.

NILS: Yeah I'm Nils Edberg, I'm working as a technical expert on SSAB.

ÅSA: I'm Åsa Bäcklin, I work with communications at HYBRIT.

MIKAEL: Mikael Norlander from Vattenfall. I work with the HYBRIT project and decarbonization of industry in general.

Those names again are Nils, Åsa and Mikael [MEE-kehl]. In just a few minutes, Åsa and Mikael are going to take me to see the new HYBRIT pilot plant—that stands for Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology, and it really is a potential breakthrough. They're trying to produce steel with no carbon emissions. They call it fossil-free steel. But before we go there, I wanted to see the old process. It's happening right in front of us as we walk through the gate, in a structure so big and industrial-looking, it's almost a caricature of itself. Like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, with oversized tubes and chutes, and a maze of exterior stairs and walkways, blackened with soot. Nils Edberg knows this behemoth inside and out.

NILS: Yeah. The big thing we have behind us here is the blast furnace. And in the blast furnace, we produce liquid hot metal that's used for making steel out of iron ore.

AMY: So if you're if you're digging iron ore out of the ground, before you can do anything with it, it has to come through something like this.

NILS: Yes.

The purpose of this blast furnace is separating iron from the rocks, or ore, it's found in. It's essentially a huge oven that gets hot enough to trigger a chemical reaction that releases the iron from the rock. So, iron ore goes in at the top, and a purer form of iron, known as pig iron, comes out of the bottom, as a liquid. The pig iron later gets mixed with other metals, like aluminum or tin, to make steel.

NILS: Do you want to see the liquid?

AMY: I do very much.

Nils leads us closer to the action.

AMY: So we're walking towards the beast, there's like some steamy stuff coming off.

NILS: And there you see, that's where the liquid is running down into another of those railway cars.

AMY: Oh wow! OK, so that streak of really bright stuff….

NILS: That's 1500 degree pig iron.

AMY: OK.

Watching a river of thick red-hot liquid metal pouring out of an enormous black tower is just kind of cool. What's less cool are all of the carbon emissions being produced in this process. Because the key ingredient in the chemical reaction here is coal. The carbon in the coal bonds with the oxygen in the iron ore, and when you put carbon and oxygen together, you get CO2. Carbon dioxide. And a rapidly warming world.

AMY: Just to get to the heart of the matter here, in relation to the HYBRIT project, this whole thing is running on one of the dirtiest and least efficient fossil fuels that we have. Coal.

NILS: Well, yeah, you can you can say that it's dirty. This is one of the most efficient blast furnaces around. I can tell you.

AMY: As far as blast furnaces go, it's a good one.

NILS: Yeah.

AMY: But it's still a blast furnace.

NILS: And the main part of steel produced today is produced in the blast furnace. And this is one of the best blast furnaces. But you're right, we have to use coal in this process, and emit a lot of carbon dioxide from this process. And that's what we want to get rid of.

SSAB is one of three companies that have come together here to figure out how to make iron and steel without carbon emissions, and if they're successful, blast furnaces like this one will become museum pieces. Really big museum pieces.

AMBI: goodbye, starting car

We say good bye to Nils, and then get into our cars to go see the new HYBRIT plant.

AMY: I'm driving behind Åsa's Volvo.

Driving through the steelworks I start to get a sense of how much coal it really takes to run a blast furnace.

AMY: Here I'm driving by machines moving coal of different consistencies around, big chunks, little chunks pulverized, and there's another big tall factory off in the distance.

As Nils said, SSAB's blast furnaces are more efficient than most, but there's simply no climate-friendly way to make steel using coal. According to the company's website, SSAB is responsible for 10% of Sweden's CO2 emissions—it's the country's largest single emitter. But in a few years, all of these piles of coal might be gone. Because SSAB is trying to create a new process that runs on a completely different fuel: hydrogen. We come around a bend, and the HYBRIT plant comes into view.

AMY: HYBRIT fossil free steel, it says in English

It's a constellation of tall silvery rectangles, clearly the shiny new kid on an old coal-fired block.

AMBI: stopping car

ÅSA: Here's for you. You need to change shoes and put on a vest and a helmet.

Åsa Bäcklin does a lot of the communications work for the HYBRIT project. She gives me a safety vest and hard hat to wear. We can't go inside the plant—this was the spring of 2021, and COVID restrictions were in place—but as we walk around it Mikael Nordlander explains how it works. Mikael works for Sweden's state-owned energy company, called Vattenfall. They're one of three partners on the HYBRIT project.

MIKAEL: The 50 meter tall building in the back, that's where we mix hydrogen with iron ore to make iron.

Mikael says just like in a blast furnace, the purpose of the HYBRIT plant is to get the iron to separate from the iron ore. The thing that's holding them together is oxygen.

MIKAEL: The iron and the oxygen is stuck together real hard, so you need loads of energy to break that. And you basically need to make the oxygen want to jump over to something else. And in the case of the blast furnace, you make the oxygen jump over with coal or carbon, and then it forms carbon dioxide. And in this case, when we have hydrogen, the oxygen jumps over to the hydrogen and forms, H2O, so water. So you eliminate the very root cause of the emissions of the process by doing it this way.

MUSIC

For those of us who haven't thought much about chemistry since high school, let me repeat what Mikael said. In a blast furnace, you get the oxygen to separate from the iron by using carbon in the form of coal. Carbon plus oxygen leads to CO2. Carbon dioxide. Thus, the climate crisis. In the HYBRIT plant, the carbon is replaced with hydrogen. And hydrogen plus oxygen leads to H2O. Water. That's the byproduct of making steel in this new way.

AMY: The hydrogen is basically taking the place of what the coal was doing.

MIKAEL: Yeah. That's the kind of glue that rips out the oxygen out of the iron ore.

If all of the steel made in the world today switched to a carbon-free process like this one, it would be the equivalent of India and Japan—both among the world's top ten emitters—going to net zero. And then staying there. But the rub here is that there's basically no free hydrogen to be found on Earth, it's all bound up with other elements. Hydrogen is the smallest atom on the periodic table. It's the lightest of gases—so light, that unless its bound to some other element, it will float up, escape the atmosphere, and disappear into space. So if you want to get some pure hydrogen, which is what they need here at the HYBRIT plant, you have to extract it from something else, like water.

MIKAEL: You need energy to break the bond of water into hydrogen and oxygen. That's what we're doing also in this building, using a technology called electrolysis, which is basically a machine where you put in water and then you put it in electricity and then you split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

So, step one: separate hydrogen from water, using electrolysis. Step two: use that hydrogen to pull the oxygen out of iron ore. You end up with a tank full of water, and a bunch of iron. No carbon emissions. Voila. But if it's so easy to do this, why isn't this happening all over the world? The answer—of course—is that it's not super easy in some important ways. One of the biggest obstacles is energy. You need a whole lot of it to do electrolysis.

MIKAEL: So, of course, this process wouldn't really make sense if you use fossil fuels to make the electricity to make the electrolysis. But if you have fossil-free electricity going into the making of hydrogen, then it makes sense. And this is exactly what we have here.

Using hydrogen in industrial processes isn't new—it's been used to make fertilizers and chemicals for many years. But almost all of that hydrogen is produced with fossil fuels. In fact, many major oil companies are promoting the use of so-called “blue hydrogen,” which is produced using methane gas. They're touting it as a win for the climate, but in reality, the carbon emissions involved in this process are still very high,. But that's not what's happening here in Sweden. The energy sector is already very decarbonized here, the bulk of the electricity in the country is generated using hydropower, followed by nuclear, wind and biofuels. So the hydrogen produced here is known as “green hydrogen,” meaning it's essentially carbon-free.

MIKAEL: So the river behind us, upstream of that river, we have 4000 megawatts of hydropower plants, which is a lot.

Fossil-free electricity is a huge part of what's making this project work. If you've listened to our whole season, you might be picking up on a theme here. It's what Chris Clack, Jim Williams, Leah Stokes and other guests have said: once you have large quantities of renewable energy to work with, then you can start making true systems change. Then it becomes possible to imagine projects like this, where a lot of energy is used to make hydrogen, which can then be used as a replacement for coal.

Natural gas, composed mostly of methane, can also be used instead of coal to make iron. And that results in lower emissions. But Mikael says they're not aiming for lower CO2. They're aiming for zero.

MIKAEL: What we're doing in this concept is basically we're putting together pieces of technology and building a new system. So how to make hydrogen from electricity that has been known for a hundred years. But this is the first time we've put it together in a way that completely eliminates the use of coal in the process.

Hearing this got me excited, because it reminded me of what we learned about how the Industrial Revolution took off. That transformation was also sparked by people who made tweaks to existing technologies, and experimented with putting systems together in new ways. Climate change solutions aren't going to descend from heaven fully-formed, they are going to emerge out of processes full of trial and error, surprises and serendipity. And that's what this first HYBRIT plant in Luleå is actually for. It's a small pilot plant created for the express purpose of learning.

MIKAEL: I mean, this plant will teach us how to set up a more commercial process, which we are planning to do. This is the place where we learn how to do it.

Three companies came together to form HYBRIT: SSAB, the steel-making company, Vattenfall, the energy company, and LKAB, an iron-mining company. They began construction in 2018, with a plan to spend 140 million dollars just on the pilot phase. And one of my biggest question is: why? Why are these three companies pouring money, effort and time, into a new, untested idea like this? Why take the risk?

MIKAEL: I think if you haven't started by now to look at how you're going to make your transition as a company that causes lots of CO2 emissions, you're about to be in trouble.

Mikael says he thinks the real risk is actually not taking action, not trying to lead the decarbonization process. He says it's clear to all of the partners that the steel industry can either choose to change or be forced to change. And they decided it was in their interest to be proactive. The Swedish steel industry is pretty small in a global context, and they're hoping fossil free steel could be their competitive advantage.

MIKAEL: All the way from the start it has been a real sense of opportunity in this, that, whoa, we have lots of good resources, we have clean energy, which is affordable. And if we can reinvent this process, we will have something that is clearly unique, which people all over the globe wants. And we're a tiny player, we're in hard competition with companies all over the world. And the only thing to have a gain is to take on some pain and do this transition I think.

AMY: Could any one of these companies have done it on their own?

MIKAEL: No, I don't think so.

AMY: Why not?

MIKAEL: When you cooperate and you mix those company cultures, those competencies, those heritage, something new, I mean, the sum is bigger than the parts. And I think that is crucial for this to make happen. Of course the important piece is the making of the iron, but it's just a part of an entire system. We're building a new system. So, I mean, if you would have been sitting in separate rooms and doing this, it wouldn't simply work.

Cooperation. This is another recurring theme for this season. It seems like no matter where I start I keep landing on it. Mikael says these three companies essentially had to collaborate, because they needed each other in order to synchronize their investments and activities, and to spread out the risks involved. And he says they also needed each other to be able to think really big. To go beyond reducing emissions here and there around the margins, and focus on truly transforming how iron and steel are made, all the way from the mine to the finished product.

MIKAEL: That I think is really the way to go in order to do as good an efficient system as possible.

AMY: I think some people would hear three big companies working together. That sounds instead of like cooperation. That sounds like a nightmare of, you know, competition. Like you're talking about blending cultures that maybe don't blend, people getting territorial and with there some some of that kind of thing to work through, or is there still?

MIKAEL: It has been, it still is, and it will probably in the future. I mean, cooperation like this is not easy. We're trying to do something really disruptive and trying to do it really fast. And what we need to do is basically to cooperate in a way that we act like a small startup, but at the same time use the big resources of being a big company. And the governance challenge of that is quite immense, to be honest. Yeah, it is. It is actually sometimes trickier than the technology part I would say.

AMY: So I would imagine I mean, because you can make machines do what you want them to, but people are much less obedient.

MIKAEL: Yeah. And creating that culture, which which is a mix of of the force of big companies and the agility of small companies...that takes some contemplation.

AMY: It strikes me that this is in a way, sort of an analogy for the entire problem of climate change. That we have to be able to think with much more agility that with massive resources….

MIKAEL: Yeah.

AMY: You're nodding.

MIKAEL: Yeah.

MUSIC

Take a bold idea, develop it collaboratively, and then infuse it with the resources and power of existing institutions. That's what we need to do in all kinds of contexts in order to solve the climate crisis. And like Mikael said, it's not easy. But this project demonstrates that it's possible. In August 2021, just a few months after I visited HYBRIT, they produced the world's first fossil-free steel here, and delivered it to another Swedish company, Volvo, which used it to produce the first vehicle made of fossil-free steel. It's a huge achievement, and there's more to come: a new, bigger HYBRIT plant is now going up in another northern Swedish town, called Gällivare, nd that's where we're headed, after the break.

BREAK

PROMO: Story Collider

AMY: What do you think defines Norrbotten as a region? What are the defining

characteristics?

MARITA: I think the people here, they are strong. They are used to have ups and downs. It comes times...bad times, good times. So the people they are used to, and they are open minded. If you have a work, then you are welcome. Everyone must work, then you are like one of us.

Welcome back to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and I'm talking with Marita Johansson, she owns a hostel in Gällivare, a city of around 17,000 people, just north of the Arctic Circle that's home to one of the biggest iron mines in Europe. Now that we've got a basic understanding of the technical side of fossil-free steel, I want to turn our attention to the human side: how ordinary people here in northern Sweden are being affected by this movement toward a new, greener version of industry. And how they're helping to bring those changes about. Is there something going on up here that can be replicated in other places looking to be part of the green transition? Because the story here is actually much bigger than HYBRIT. Another company, called H2 Green Steel, is also planning to build a huge hydrogen-fueled steel plant in this region. A little further south, in the city of Skellefteå, a company called Northvolt is building a big new battery factory that aims to make batteries that are 95 percent recyclable. The availability of inexpensive renewable energy is definitely a major factor. Also, an abundance of minerals and metals: more than 90% of the iron ore produced in the European Union comes from Sweden, and one-quarter of that* comes from the area around Gällivare. But energy and iron can't accomplish anything on their own; it's what people choose to do with those things that matters. So, what's the secret sauce—why are these new green industries taking root here in Norrbotten Sweden's northernmost county, which has just 250,000 people, and about the same number of reindeer?

MARITA: It's a lot of sporty people. They love the snow, they love to ski. They love the nature. They love to go out hunting, fishing. They are always out.

Marita grew up here, and she says people in this area are very connected to nature. When they aren't working in the mine, they're out playing in the snow. But even though this is a rural place, it's still very globally connected. I'd heard Marita speaking other languages with guests in the hostel. Not just English, which almost all Swedes can speak fluently, but other languages too.

AMY: How many different languages do you speak?

MARITA: I speak Finnish, English, of course Swedish, French and some Russian, some Italian. You must learn some, some different languages when you have a hostel. And maybe I have a talent for languages.

AMY: It sounds like it.

MUSIC

Marita may indeed have a talent for languages, but her polyglotism isn't nearly as unusual here as it would be in a small city in the rural United States. Although the stereotype is that this country is full of nothing but tall blonde people, the reality is twenty percent of people living in Sweden were born in other countries. For comparison's sake, that number is between 13 and 14 percent for the United States and the UK. And this internationalism may be a background factor in helping to open people's minds to the transition away from fossil fuels. Culturally and economically, there's a sense that they key to future success is a global mindset. Even if you're living in a rural town, working in an iron mine.

LINA: I got my first kid as I was very young. And it's a safe place to grow up here so I stayed. And I like it here. I like the snow.

Lina Nystrom [LEE-nah NEE-strum] also grew up in Gällivare, and she works as a production coordinator at the iron mine, which is owned by the company called LKAB. She joined the company 12 years ago, when she was just 20 years old.

LINA: I needed a job. I needed the money. I want to move out from home. Yeah. So it was a good start, and I like their policy. I like how they treat their, their staff and everything.

Because of covid, I wasn't able to go underground to see the mine for myself, so I asked Lina to tell me what it's like. I assumed people went down into the mine in elevators, but I was wrong—you drive into it she says. And there are 600 kilometers of roads down there. That's about 370 miles. That's how huge this mine is.

LINA: And the first impression for new people mostly be like they are afraid, maybe for the roof. It's no danger they are checking it every day.

Lina says there are multiple levels to the mine, and some of them have offices and workshops in them. There's even a restaurant down there. And instead of workers with pick axes, they use dynamite to get the iron ore out.

LINA: Every day at the midnight they shoot off with dynamite and then they load it the day after.

AMY: Every day at midnight. How long has that been a ritual?

LINA: In my forever.

AMY Wow. So do people...can you ever feel it above ground?

LINA Yes, all the time.

AMY: Really?

LINA: And when you sleep away, you miss it.

MUSIC

I think for most people, living on top of an iron mine that's getting regularly blasted with dynamite doesn't sound terribly relaxing. But for people in Gällivare, that small earthquake every night at midnight is the sound and feel of home. And also, job security. The iron that gets blasted out of the tunnels of this massive mine deep below our feet is turned into steel products that get used around the world. And soon it will fed into the new commercial-scale fossil-free HYBRIT plant, which will be built here at LKAB.

AMY: Do you think you'd like to work in the new plant?

LINA: Yes.

AMY: Why?

LINA: I like to learn new things, and it's exciting because it's new. I think it's going to be a big deal.

The idea of something being a big deal here is especially meaningful when you understand that there's a long history of extracting resources from the north of Sweden, while money and power stay concentrated in the south, in cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg. But now, thanks to projects like HYBRIT, there's a sense that the regional dynamics are shifting. She says she cares about the environment, but what really excites her about the idea of working in the new HYBRIT plant is the opportunity to be part of something innovative.

LINA: It sounds like the future. Like you spare the environment and for the next generation. It's new and it's good, it's for good sake. So I want to be a part of that.

AMY: Like it feels like a place you can believe in the work.

LINA: Yes.

MUSIC

Lina believes in the work, and in the company she works for, LKAB. And she's not unusual in this regard. Labor relations are generally very good in Sweden, thanks in no small part to the strength of unions. More than 65% of the population is unionized here, and that's part of what has led to a whole slew of policies that make Sweden the envy of the world for workers. Just to hit the highlights: universal free healthcare. Five weeks of paid vacation a year, although many people get six, and that's on top of a long list of national holidays. Parents in Sweden get 480 days of paid leave per child. Yes, you heard that right. Sixteen months, paid. If you get sick or lose your job, you can tap into a deep well of support. And if you are working and decide you want to go advance your education—no problem, your job is guaranteed to be waiting for you when you're done. Oh, and college is free.

With all of these policies in place—and more that I don't have time to mention—it's not terribly surprising that workers like Lina have a positive feeling about their jobs. Another thing that helps to keep the good vibes going is income equality. Most CEOs of big American companies make hundreds of times more than the average worker. In Sweden, the pay gap is much, much less. According to one study from 2017, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay in the U.S. was 312-to-1. In Sweden, it was 40-to-1.

AMY: It sounds like you feel pretty loyal to the company, like the company is a good employer to have.

LINA: I think so. For me, it has been. I like it there. Because all of my colleagues are we are also driven to do it the right way. So everyone work at the same goal.

AMY: And when you say the right way, can you tell me more what you mean by that?

LINA: We want to do improvement for the environment so I just want to be a part of that.

I'm talking with Lina in the kitchen of another LKAB worker, Peter Knekta [PAY-tehr (or PEE-tur) KUHNECK-tah]. He's been working for the company for 16 years, and he agrees with Lina that LKAB is trying to reduce their environmental impact in many ways. But he also has no illusions about the nature of the business they're in.

PETER: I believe that a mine is never good for the environment. It makes big wounds and some pollution also. Of course, it's a big industry.

And some of those wounds will take a really long time to heal. Peter says he'll show me what he means over in the village right next to Gällivare, called Malmberget. We hop into his truck, and on the way we chit-chat about what he likes to do for fun around here.

PETER: Yeah, sometimes I go hunting with the skis.

AMY: What do you hunt?

PETER: Mostly birds. I'm not that great hunter. So if I depended on that, I would be really skinny.

We arrive in Malmberget and Peter drives up to the edge of a huge crater in what used to be the center of town, surrounded by a tall fence. All the mining activity around here has made the land unstable, and for decades, it's been collapsing in various places [see pg. 20/88]. This hole in the middle of town has been slowly growing since the 1950s, but there are still some lights on in the houses nearby.

PETER: I guess some people are still living here.

AMY: It feels like it'd be kind of surreal to live next to this big hole that's like slowly eating its way toward you.

PETER: Yeah it is.

AMY: It sounds a little scary.

PETER: Ah, I don't know scary. It's a part of mining.

Historically, Malmberget was its own distinct community, with its own identity, and its own small town pride. Now in it's in a strange liminal state, on its way to becoming a ghost town, but not quite there yet. On one street, we see several homes with cars in the driveways. On the next, we drive past big empty apartment buildings and vacant lots where houses have been picked up, loaded onto trucks, and moved to safer ground over in Gällivare.

PETER: And here we have a graveyard. One old graveyard. But you have to move it, I guess.

AMY: That has to be moved too.

PETER: Yeah. Everything here.

Malmberget became a town because of the mining industry, and in the not-too-distant future, it will cease to exist because of the impacts of that same industry. It's more than halfway gone already.

AMY: Do people have resentment about that?

PETER: Yes, some of them have. They are feeling it's too bad. But for me, it's a sign of the future. We're making a new town.

So industry in Sweden does have a shadow side just as it does in Gary, Indiana, and kind of everywhere. Like Peter said, not everyone here is happy about the loss of Malmberget, and there's plenty of debate about how the move is being handled. And there are major social justice issues connected to industrial development here too. Sweden was officially neutral during World War II, and a lot of the iron mined here during that period was sent to Nazi Germany. And all of Norrbotten, and in fact, much of present-day Sweden—is part of Sapmi, the homeland of the Sámi people. For hundreds of years, the Swedish church and crown, centered in the south, treated Sápmi as a colony. Sámi people were often forced to work in the mines, and their reindeer herding lands have been fragmented by roads, railways, towns, and of course the mines themselves. And those controversies are not over. There's currently a new mine being planned near Jokkmokk, a major center of Sámi culture, and it's being met with strong opposition from many Sámi people, and others.

So it's not like the iron and steel industries in Sweden developed in some blissful, conflict-free context. And I think that's actually what makes Sweden's current situation feel especially important to study: the story here is not that industry is perfect. It's that even with the conflicts and the controversies, somehow a culture has emerged here in which everyone from executives to workers are invested in trying to make industry better.

AMBI: Peter's truck

Peter and I leave Malmberget and drive the few minutes back over to Gällivare. It's cold and dark, and snowing hard, but there are a lot of people out and about, the community feels lively. LKAB is contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to help with the transition away from Malmberget. They're working with the local government to help move historically significant buildings, and to build new ones. There's a new sports center in town, where some kids are having hockey practice, and we check out the new “Kunskaphuset,” a beautiful new combination high school and adult learning center.

PETER: I guess that's the part of the future, we're building a lot.

AMY: And I imagine all this moving and building and everything, that that has to have be creating some jobs.

PETER: Yes, a lot of jobs. And a belief in the future when you are putting that much money into it.

AMY: Right, you're basically saying, “we're not going to let this place die.”

PETER: No.

MUSIC

Seeing how LKAB is handling this transition, I couldn't help but think about Gary, Indiana. How different could things be there if the government and industry invested in it like this? What could the future of Gary look like if companies U.S. Steel decided to go all-in on fossil fuel reduction, and engaged workers and the community as a whole in that project? Because, just like in Gällivare, there are plenty of people in Gary who want to believe in the future of their community. But it's much harder to maintain that belief when you have to battle constantly to get corporations to follow basic environmental laws—when you have to collect your children's teeth to get them tested for lead poisoning. That disregard for the health of the community is unthinkable here. There's a sense that everyone is basically pulling in the same direction, even when they disagree. And that makes it easier to see shades of grey, in your employer, in your government, and in yourself.

PETER: I'm a consumer. I mean, I have a snowmobile, I have a car, I have telephones and everything. So we got to take the metals from somewhere and I guess, we got it here, so..

AMY: Yeah.

PETER: And the same with the waste, if we are going to consume, if we like to have lots of stuff and then you got to take care of the waste also. But you can do a lot to make it even better.

ANDERS: The world needs steel and we can deliver it in a climate friendly way. And to be in a company that's that's evolving, that's developing with people who are prepared for change. That's so interesting.

Anders Linderg is the press manager for LKAB. He's showing me around the mining area—the above-ground parts that are open to visitors. Like Lina and Peter, he is excited about the HYBRIT project, and the general direction the company is taking.

ANDERS: I liked working for LKAB when I started in 2005, but that feeling has really grown now with the green transition. It's….a really good feeling at the moment.

We drive past giant structures connected by conveyer belts and pipelines. It looks very much like the old version of industry. But Anders says LKAB is transitioning all vehicles and machinery in the mine to run on electricity. They're aiming to remove carbon emissions from every step of the iron-making process.

ANDERS: We want to do it fossil free. And that's that's the key time of the entire process. Fossil free. So our customers could say that they have fossil free steel.

But all of these processes take energy. Anders says in the future, up to one-third of Sweden's total electric energy production will be needed here at LKAB.

ANDERS: For the next perhaps 10 to 15 years, we have enough energy here in northern Sweden to start the first stages of our transition. But after that, we have to have new energy sources. And of course, when we can't export energy to south of Sweden, they will to have new energy sources. So this is a huge question that's something for everyone in Sweden to be a part of and decide, do we want to do this?

In the U.S. it's not uncommon to hear people say, “why should we try to lower our carbon emissions when China is burning so much coal?” even though the United States is still the world's second biggest emitter, and historically, we've produced more greenhouse gases than any other nation. Here in Sweden, they're already one of the lowest carbon-emitting countries in the developed world—they're leading the pack. But the attitude here is still: how can we do better? I don't think Swedes are inherently more virtuous than anyone else—and I don't think they think that either. This mindset just seems normal to them. And that's what I'm so curious about: how did this become the dominant paradigm here? I want to figure it out so we can bottle it and share it around the world. I ask Anders what he would put in that bottle.

ANDERS: I think there's two main ingredients. It's knowledge and it's motivation. Knowledge about climate change, about our processes, about what's possible to do and then motivation. Why should we do this? You have to believe in climate change. You have to believe in science, and that's something we do at LKAB. I mean, our operations are grounded in scientific results. So not believing in the science when they say, Hey, you have to do something about the climate change. Oh, of course we have. I'm sure we have people who say, I don't believe in that, you know, CO2, is just a hoax. I'm sure we have those, but they're not that many and they have to adapt because LKAB is doing this anyway.

I asked Mikael Nordlander this question as well, and he also talked about the strong sense of shared motivation. He said the foundation of the whole endeavor is that these three industrial companies want to be part of the solution. And starting from that mindset, they came to see the need to get off of fossil fuels not as a burden, but an opportunity.

MIKAEL: I would hate to have a job that doesn't make any difference. I think it's the most important question we have. It's on the personal level I think I'm really, really lucky to have the chance to work with this. I mean, it's probably the most exciting thing you can work on, the spot of the planet where we have the best circumstances to do it. So that gives me a lot of satisfaction. It would be even more when we get this up and scale.

HYBRIT is leading the transition in the steel industry, but it's not alone. There are steel companies all around the world, including in the United States, that are also working on reducing or eliminating fossil fuels in their plants. And of course, this transition is what we need to do in all of our industries, and communities, and homes. So what can we learn from what's going on here in Sweden? One thing is that having lots of carbon-free energy available is a great way to spark innovation. But the social and cultural infrastructure here are big factors too. Sweden has invested in the education that leads to the knowledge and motivation that Anders and Mikael talked about. And they've prioritized equality, which helps to build a culture of cooperation. Their strong social safety net gives people confidence that they'll stay secure in the midst of change, and fosters an attitude of: we're all in this together. Not in a particularly sentimental way, just as a matter of fact. My well-being is tied up with your well-being, and all we're all tied to the well-being of the planet.

And that makes me think of Carl Sandburg. We named this trio of episodes about the steel industry “Prayers of Steel” after his poem by that name. In the first stanza, he seems to be pleading to become a steel crowbar that can “pry loose old walls” and “lift and loosen old foundations.” But at the end of the poem, he's praying to become a force of connection, he writes,

Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.  

Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.  

Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.  

Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

We've destroyed a lot through our industrial processes—we've caused real harm to the Earth and to each other. But maybe under the pressure of the climate crisis we can reinvent industry, and learn how to channel our creativity and power into the project of helping to hold the world, and our communities, together.

CREDITS: Miles from Wyoming

This episode of Threshold was produced and reported by me, Amy Martin, with help from Nick Mott and Erika Janik. The rest of the Threshold team is Caysi Simpson, Deneen Wiske, Eva Kalea, Sam Moore, and Shola Lawal. Our intern is Emery Veilleux. Thanks to Sara Sneath, Sally Deng, Maggy Contreras, Hana Carey, Dan Carreno, Luca Borghese, Julia Barry, Kara Cromwell, Katie deFusco, Caroline Kurtz, and Gabby Piamonte. Special thanks to Joe Loviska and Ulf Nilsson. The music is by Todd Sickafoose.