alt Hacker NewsThe issue with the green steel production in Sweden is not about regulations, nor even about energy. It is that every aspect of green hydrogen is more expensive in reality than what was promised/predicted 20 years ago, and the prices are not going down in the way that people wished. 90% of Steel foundries work through using natural gas, and when natural gas prices went after Russia invasion of Ukraine, the result has been a struggling steel industry and production moving to countries which continue to buy gas from Russia (at a discounted war price).
The market price for energy regularly reaches close to 0 in nordpool during periods of optimal weather conditions, but the market price for green hydrogen do not. It has been and continue to be quite more expensive than natural gas. Hydrogen is also a very tricky and expensive to work with, and the cost to modify or construct new foundries to use hydrogen is not simple nor a cheap upgrade. Regardless of what they do with regulations, the problem with green hydrogen are not one that politicians can solve without reaching for subsidies and pouring tax money into the black hole (which is what the Swedish government decided a few days ago).
Agree that green hydrogen is still in its infancy but I don't think it can be considered a "black hole", it's a new technology which requires, as any novel technology not yet proven commercially, government investments for research and further development.
I believe it ties quite well with the build out of renewables, the necessary plan for renewables is to overprovision since it can fluctuate, energy storage is one way to use the excess production, and another is to further develop hydrogen technology to be better suited for industrial processes requiring natural gas.
Without government investment there won't be any private enterprise developing it, it's quite known that capitalism doesn't help in taking massive risks with not-yet-proven technology, it can work for scaling, and getting into economies of scale but before that I don't think it's a black hole to bet on the future of it. At some point it will be needed to be done, rather develop the technology early, and export it rather than wait until China does it anyway (because the USA will definitely not be the first mover in this space).