Salzgitter joins partnership to produce lower-emissions steel tower

Ilsenburger Grobblech, a subsidiary of steelmaker Salzgitter, and SMB Schönebecker Maschinenbau, a TM Group company, have joined with ENERCON in the hopes to mark a further step towards achieving more sustainability in the production processes of wind turbines.

The steel tower components will be put to use early in 2025 on an E-138 EP3 wind turbine as part of the Diepholzer Bruch wind farm project in Lower Saxony, Germany. This will make it one of the first onshore wind turbines in Europe – and the first in Germany – to feature a tower made from lower-emissions steel, often referred to as ‘green steel’, the companies have said.

‘‘Working together with such strong partners from the steel industry means we are making significant progress in our mission to integrate sustainability systematically and measurably in our products and processes’’, said Stefan Frey, local procurement director for towers at ENERCON. ‘‘By pooling our expertise, we can reduce the CO₂e footprint of this steel tower by more than 70%. This co-operation provides us with an important basis from which we can offer our customers an even more sustainable tower option in future, while of course maintaining our high quality standards and using state-of-the-art tower technology.’’

In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the production of heavy plates, Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH is using physically CO₂-reduced slabs from its sister company Peiner Träger GmbH and another European partner company for this project. They are produced entirely from scrap in an electric arc furnace (EAF). The company is using an energy mix with a significant share of renewable energies.

‘‘We are working closely with strong research and industry partners to achieve a steel production that is as climate-neutral as possible. We are therefore very pleased to be producing the first lower-emissions tower for a wind turbine in Germany together with ENERCON and other companies from the steel industry’’, commented Thorsten Gintaut, managing director of sales at Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH. '‘The Salzgitter Group is a leader in the transformation towards low-CO₂ production processes and steel products. With our SALCOS^® – Salzgitter Low CO₂ Steelmaking – programme, we are working on replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen produced from renewable energies. The aim is to avoid the generation of CO₂ in the steel production process from the outset and thus enable us to reduce our overall CO₂ emissions by an estimated 95% by the end of 2033.’'