The tech giant intends to buy certificates from Stegra’s hydrogen-fueled steel mill to support the scale-up of cleaner construction materials for data centers.

Google is backing the buildout of a novel green-steel mill in Sweden as the tech giant grapples with rising greenhouse gas emissions from its AI expansion.

On Thursday, the company said it is partnering with Stegra to help bring the Swedish firm’s flagship facility online. Unlike traditional coal-fueled mills, Stegra’s project will use green hydrogen — made from renewable electricity and water — to produce what it calls ​“near-zero emission” steel.

The agreement helps address some of the thorny challenges facing green steel companies and data center developers.

Metal-makers need wealthy, early customers like Google to help stoke investor interest in their novel manufacturing plants. Meanwhile, tech companies need cleaner construction materials to curb their growing environmental impact. Google recently reported an 18% rise in its annual emissions from 2024 to 2025, owing to its increased use of steel, concrete, computing hardware, and other materials for data centers.

The Alphabet subsidiary is not slated to buy any metal from Stegra’s multibillion-dollar plant, which is under construction in Boden, just south of the Arctic Circle.

Instead, Google will procure ​“environmental attribute certificates,” which allow the company to count emissions reductions associated with a ton of Stegra’s steel toward Google’s own sustainability targets. In exchange, Google helps defray the extra costs involved with hydrogen-based steelmaking. Stegra then sells its metal into the European market as a standard product — without labeling it as lower-carbon steel.

“By supporting early-stage technologies like Stegra’s green steel, we are helping to create a market for materials that are essential to reducing emissions,” a spokesperson for Google said by email.

Thursday’s agreement is the second of its kind for Stockholm-based Stegra, formerly H2 Green Steel. Last year, the firm struck a two-part deal to sell the certificates to Microsoft and also physical steel to Microsoft’s equipment suppliers for European data centers. Neither Microsoft nor Google provided details about the financial value of their arrangements with Stegra.

The Swedish facility is one of a handful of projects advancing globally that aim to dramatically reduce emissions from iron and steel production, which accounts for roughly 9% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions every year. The vast majority of that pollution comes from using coal in giant, dirty ironmaking furnaces.

Stegra says its operation will slash carbon emissions from steelmaking by up to 95%, compared with traditional methods. The facility taps the abundant hydropower and wind resources in northern Sweden to produce hydrogen gas — fuel that’s used to convert iron ore into iron. That iron is then transformed into steel using electric arc furnaces, also powered by renewables.

Under the new deal, Google will receive certificates from a portion — up to 91,000 metric tons — of the steel made in Stegra’s first year of production. It’s not clear exactly when operations will start. Stegra, which has weathered a series of financial woes over the last year, said its project timeline is still under review.

The facility is expected to produce 2.5 million metric tons of steel in its first phase, before ramping up to make 5 million metric tons at full tilt.

Google’s deal ​“contributes to generating increased cash flow to Stegra’s early years of operations and the ramp-up of production,” the company’s spokesperson said.

Environmental attribute certificates can play a crucial role in helping build out the world’s next generation of iron and steel facilities, experts say. Efforts to develop hydrogen-based steelmaking and other cutting-edge technologies have in recent years faced significant hurdles to scaling up, owing to their high costs and technical complexities — as well as the difficulty of competing with cheaper coal-based steel products.

The instruments are ​“a great mechanism to overcome different market barriers in industries where we need to see increased investment,” said Claire Dougherty, an industrial decarbonization program manager at RMI. The clean-energy think tank has spearheaded much of the industry’s emerging work around low-carbon iron and steel certificates.

“A hydrogen [steel] facility can cost billions of dollars, and that can be very difficult to get funding for, particularly without a guarantee that someone’s going to buy your decarbonized product at a premium,” she said. At the same time, the companies that are most willing to pay a premium — like data center developers — aren’t typically in the business of buying steel, or their operations aren’t close enough to green steel mills to justify sourcing the metal directly.

Certificates ​“can help to expand the demand pool and help those suppliers achieve bankable offtake,” Dougherty said.

Proponents are hoping to grow this model beyond pilot agreements like Google’s by creating a formal market, known as a ​“book and claim” system, for buying and selling iron and steel certificates.

Earlier this month, Stegra and the cleantech startups Electra and Charm Industrial, along with the nonprofit Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials, said they were working toward that goal by developing shared standards and metrics for how emissions reductions are counted, and for ensuring environmental claims are independently verified and traceable. The initiative builds on a comprehensive framework that RMI is set to unveil next week that lays out rules for operating a credible book-and-claim system.

“We view this as a really important next step, in terms of scaling the [certificate] market for low-carbon iron and steel producers,” said Maressa Brennan, Electra’s senior director of regulatory policy and markets.

Colorado-based Electra is developing a novel approach to ironmaking that avoids the need for a scorching furnace. Instead, the company produces iron with electrochemical devices, which are powered by renewables and can run at the same temperature as a fresh cup of coffee.

Last year, the startup announced a deal to provide environmental attribute certificates to Meta. Electra is set to start operations later this year at a demonstration plant in Jefferson County, Colorado, which will initially produce up to 500 metric tons of high-purity iron per year. The company is also assessing a few global sites for its first commercial facility, which could come online in the early 2030s, Brennan said.

“Our agreement with Meta was an early example to indicate that there’s a market interest in … these types of technologies,” she said. ​“The work we’re doing now is to more formally establish a marketplace that helps these approaches scale.”

A correction was made on Sept. 17, 2026: This article originally included a quote from a Google spokesperson that inaccurately represented how the company’s procurement will contribute to Stegra’s green steel project. This quote has been exchanged to clarify that the tech firm’s procurement will help boost Stegra’s cash flow in the project’s early years.

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The governor has blocked efforts to harness distributed energy to rein in rising utility rates. Bills on his desk could reverse that trend — if he signs them.

I’m launching this newsletter at an intriguing moment in California politics. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — who everyone knows is eyeing a run for the White House — has one last chance to show his true colors on energy and climate change. Rising electricity costs are a major issue in California, and Newsom must decide by the end of this month whether to sign a host of bills that could help cut utility rates while also advancing the state’s clean energy transition. What message does he want to send to Californians and the rest of the country?

Earlier this week, I published an assessment of Newsom’s legacy on climate and clean energy so far. Long story short: While he can legitimately brag about some things, he hasn’t been willing to take on utility interests or to challenge the status quo. That’s especially apparent in how he’s sidelined virtual power plants, vetoing and defunding efforts to harness them to rein in skyrocketing electricity rates for customers of the state’s three major utilities.

But a few bills on his desk now could at least start the long slog of reforms that experts say will help make power more affordable.

Most notable is Senate Bill 905. This year’s big affordability reform package from state Sen. Josh Becker (D) would curb utilities’ profits on wildfire-prevention investments and other spending that reduces their risk exposure. It would also expand on provisions from Becker’s reform bill passed last year that require utilities to finance more grid costs through borrowing, which also helps contain the profits they get to collect from customers.

In addition, SB 905 would encourage utilities to measure how efficiently they’re using their existing grids — a precursor to setting up regulations that could steer them toward prioritizing lower-cost solutions over expensive grid upgrades.

One such solution is tapping into virtual power plants — the customer-owned batteries, EV chargers, smart thermostats, and other devices that can provide hundreds of megawatts of power to the grid. Becker’s SB 913 would create new pathways for VPPs to help lessen reliance on aging fossil-gas-fired peaker plants.

But California’s politically powerful investor-owned utilities have vigorously opposed policies that could reduce their regulated profits. That may be why the Newsom administration has largely taken an alternative tack to save money: slashing public services paid for through utility rates. For example, Newsom backed a 2024 bill that would have cut hundreds of millions of dollars in energy-efficiency and solar programs to instead give customers a small one-time rebate.

That bill didn’t pass, but the administration’s nickel-and-diming approach has continued. In final budget negotiations this year, it successfully pushed to claw back nearly $200 million for a program that helps schools retrofit air conditioning, ventilation, and plumbing. The money will now go back to utilities, which could use it to shave pennies off their customers’ bills — or just pocket it, as pointed out by Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As Stokes said in a last-minute social media appeal to Newsom, ​“Do you really want your legacy to be taking money away from schoolkids during heat waves?”

My take

Let’s not forget that Newsom has had to manage a number of crises beyond his control, from the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric in 2019 to rolling blackouts in 2020 and 2022 to the current threat of refineries pulling out of the state. His final months in office may well be consumed in negotiating with lawmakers over how to deal with yet another looming utility wildfire-liability crisis. But these emergencies don’t absolve him from taking bold action in the areas where he does have control — like requiring utilities to enlist the state’s nation-leading fleet of distributed solar, batteries, and electric vehicles as cost-cutting tools. He’s got one last opportunity to do that. Let’s hope he takes it.

What else I’m watching

Meanwhile, I’m tracking a few other climate bills awaiting Newsom’s signature or veto:

• Balcony solar: SB 868, aka the Plug and Play Solar Act from state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), would make California the ninth state to legalize balcony solar systems that plug into regular household outlets without costly and time-consuming utility interconnection reviews. The bill was amended late in the session to include a 2030 sunset date — at the behest of PG&E, according to independent energy journalist Sammy Roth — but supporters hope it will prove popular enough to be reauthorized before that deadline hits.

• Community solar: Assembly Bill 1813 would order the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission to take another crack at creating a community solar and battery program. The bill’s author, state Assemblymember Chris Ward (D), has a personal beef on this issue: The CPUC neutered a broadly supported proposal to create a distributed solar-battery program ordered up by another of his bills that was passed in 2022.

• Transmission: One reason we might want more community solar and storage? Utilities are lagging on completing high-voltage transmission grid projects, which is delaying gigawatts of utility-scale clean energy from being built. AB 2493, from Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D), would create a new position for a transmission development monitor to track utilities’ progress and trigger corrective action when needed.

• Cutting the cord on gas: AB 2313, from Assemblymember Marc Berman (D), would require investor-owned gas utilities to offer customers whose homes need gas lines replaced the option of receiving money to help them purchase heat pumps, induction stoves, and other all-electric appliances. Think of it as a house-by-house version of the ​“non-pipeline alternatives” programs aimed at reducing investment in a gas delivery network that, under state carbon-cutting mandates, must be retired in the coming decades.

• More affordability, please: These aren’t the only affordability proposals on the table. The Utility Reform Network has a list of bills awaiting Newsom’s signature that offer even wonkier ways to ride herd on utility costs.

Dude, where’s my hydrogen?

Speaking of pipelines and stranded assets: Environmental groups are suing to stop the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power from converting its Scattergood fossil-gas power plant to also burn hydrogen, saying the municipal utility has failed to consider the air pollution harms that project could cause. But also, where’s it supposed to get the hydrogen? State regulators have rejected SoCalGas’s Angeles Link project, a pie-in-the-sky plan to pipe hydrogen made from solar in the desert to the LA Basin. And the Trump administration has pulled the plug on California’s clean hydrogen hub. If you don’t have hydrogen, you don’t have a hydrogen-burning power plant — no matter how well it might fit into some hypothetical decarbonization roadmap.

By the numbers

As a new report from a who’s who of California energy experts makes clear, there’s no silver bullet to solving an affordability crisis that has been decades in the making and has pulled California’s energy costs so far out of whack with the U.S. average.

Take a look at how the rates charged by California’s big three investor-owned utilities, already higher than the national average since the late 1970s, have really taken off in recent years. (The main cause of this latest spike is wildfire risk, of course — but that’s a problem from hell that’s better dealt with at book length.)

California and U.S. average real electricity rates and California-U.S. differences, 1970–2024

• 
  Community solar: Assembly Bill 1813 would order the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission to take another crack at creating a community solar and battery program. The bill’s author, state Assemblymember Chris Ward (D), has a personal beef on this issue: The CPUC neutered a broadly supported proposal to create a distributed solar-battery program ordered up by another of his bills that was passed in 2022.

• Transmission: One reason we might want more community solar and storage? Utilities are lagging on completing high-voltage transmission grid projects, which is delaying gigawatts of utility-scale clean energy from being built. AB 2493, from Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D), would create a new position for a transmission development monitor to track utilities’ progress and trigger corrective action when needed.

• Cutting the cord on gas: AB 2313, from Assemblymember Marc Berman (D), would require investor-owned gas utilities to offer customers whose homes need gas lines replaced the option of receiving money to help them purchase heat pumps, induction stoves, and other all-electric appliances. Think of it as a house-by-house version of the ​“non-pipeline alternatives” programs aimed at reducing investment in a gas delivery network that, under state carbon-cutting mandates, must be retired in the coming decades.

• More affordability, please: These aren’t the only affordability proposals on the table. The Utility Reform Network has a list of bills awaiting Newsom’s signature that offer even wonkier ways to ride herd on utility costs.

Dude, where’s my hydrogen?

Speaking of pipelines and stranded assets: Environmental groups are suing to stop the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power from converting its Scattergood fossil-gas power plant to also burn hydrogen, saying the municipal utility has failed to consider the air pollution harms that project could cause. But also, where’s it supposed to get the hydrogen? State regulators have rejected SoCalGas’s Angeles Link project, a pie-in-the-sky plan to pipe hydrogen made from solar in the desert to the LA Basin. And the Trump administration has pulled the plug on California’s clean hydrogen hub. If you don’t have hydrogen, you don’t have a hydrogen-burning power plant — no matter how well it might fit into some hypothetical decarbonization roadmap.

By the numbers

As a new report from a who’s who of California energy experts makes clear, there’s no silver bullet to solving an affordability crisis that has been decades in the making and has pulled California’s energy costs so far out of whack with the U.S. average.

Take a look at how the rates charged by California’s big three investor-owned utilities, already higher than the national average since the late 1970s, have really taken off in recent years. (The main cause of this latest spike is wildfire risk, of course — but that’s a problem from hell that’s better dealt with at book length.)

California and U.S. average real electricity rates and California-U.S. differences, 1970–2024

One more thing

It’s not all doom and gloom around here! My wife and I — and of course our constant companion, Lily the corgi — had a lovely Labor Day weekend up in the Sierra foothills. Check out this sunset! (I couldn’t help taking a photo with power lines in the background ;-)

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State-funded hubs will focus on skills that can transfer to other sectors, like data centers. That may help workers as Trump policies threaten to upend job markets.

Illinois has spent the last few years training hundreds of people for clean energy jobs. Now, it’s upgrading its keystone program to better respond to new workforce realities.

In 2023, Illinois rolled out about a dozen state-funded hubs that paid individuals to learn basic job-hunting skills and clean energy trades, with priority given to those from marginalized communities or areas impacted by fossil-fuel pollution or fossil-fuel job losses.

The initiative prepared participants for a range of roles, from manufacturing EV components to auditing buildings for energy efficiency. An especially heavy focus was put on training solar installers as state and federal incentives bolstered Illinois’ rapidly growing solar industry.

State law requires updates to the curriculum every three years, and in August, Illinois unveiled a new version that stakeholders hope will be more responsive to shifting economic and political winds. The idea is to ensure that the training for clean energy jobs can be easily transferred to other sectors, such as housing development and the data center industry.

Advocates and experts involved with the curriculum revamp say it comes at an opportune time, as the Trump administration’s anti-renewable energy policies threaten to impact job markets.

“Workers who are interested in working with clean energy and learning about these new technologies … don’t need to limit themselves to only working in clean energy,” said Peter Fugiel, senior research specialist at the University of Illinois’ Climate Jobs Institute, which was created by state law to study the economic and workforce impacts of clean energy programs. ​“Learning a broader trade or set of technologies might give them more opportunities to work and apply their skills even when there are policy shifts.”

The new curriculum is largely informed by research from Fugiel and his colleagues that is cataloged in a clean jobs inventory released in August. That report urged the state to consider adopting a ​“career cluster” approach that trains workers in broader subject areas, rather than focusing on individual occupations, like solar installation, as the previous curriculum did.

The state took that advice, and the new framework offers five career clusters for students to choose from: construction; manufacturing; utilities; professional services; and installation, maintenance, and repair. It also puts a heavier emphasis on apprenticeships and developing ​“transferable competencies,” like understanding logistics and supply chains in manufacturing.

For example, the construction cluster could prepare workers not only to build wind or solar farms, Fugiel explained, but also to construct data centers, install geothermal heating and cooling systems, and build new schools.

The new curriculum is ​“more generalized, less specialized, so it can be more resilient when big swings happen in the market,” said Mary Kuhn, policy program specialist for the Chicago Jobs Council, a nonprofit that supports workforce development programs in the state.

Trump administration policies could drive such swings. Take Illinois’ solar sector, for example. It has seen rapid and steady employment growth since 2020, according to federal data cited in the clean jobs inventory.

While some of that growth is due to robust state support for solar, it is also thanks to federal clean energy tax credits created by the Biden administration. But last year, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress abruptly tightened deadlines for those incentives, while tariffs and stringent rules around foreign supply chains are also expected to drive up the price of solar.

Although solar job postings in Illinois remained strong in 2025, according to the inventory’s analysis of data from global analytics firm Lightcast, those changes could eventually dampen construction and thus employment opportunities in the state.

Regarding clean energy jobs more broadly, ​“it’s hard to say what will happen within the next few years as markets hopefully stabilize,” said Linda Larsen, who is associate director of research for the Climate Jobs Institute and collaborated on Illinois’ new curriculum. ​“I would expect to see more vulnerability in sectors that really rely on federal subsidies,” such as electric vehicles.

The clean jobs inventory found that occupations ​“with the brightest outlook” in Illinois in coming years include construction laborers, power line installers, electricians, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning technicians.

Such jobs will likely grow in part because of data center construction and the expansion of building electrification and energy efficiency, the Climate Jobs Institute researchers said in interviews. Kuhn noted the state’s mandates for utilities to invest in getting buildings off fossil fuels and helping them use less energy. Meanwhile, spiking power prices and energy demand from data centers may further encourage utilities and residents to invest in efficiency, since it can lower energy bills and reduce strain on the grid.

Larsen said that the energy storage sector may ramp up hiring in years to come as well, given the state passed a law last fall that creates incentives for the technology. Batteries have also been mostly spared from the Trump administration’s crusade against clean energy, though they could be affected by supply chain rules and tariffs.

Fugiel is hopeful Illinois’ new approach will set workers up for success regardless of which opportunities end up being most abundant.

“I think of it like a garden. A good gardener wouldn’t want to plant just one type of crop,” he said. ​“We can have our fast-growing annual crops such as solar — or in the past, wind — and also these larger more established sectors that are like the hardy perennials that every year create thousands of jobs, like energy efficiency, the manufacturing of components, HVAC installation.”

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