Google buys Stegra's attribute, not the steel

Until now, buying low-emission steel meant buying the steel. On 17 September 2026 Google announced a different kind of contract: it will receive environmental attribute certificates (EACs) covering up to 91,000 tonnes of the steel produced in the first year of Stegra's plant in Boden, Sweden, which replaces coal with green hydrogen in iron reduction.

The announcement states the steel is designed to meet the IEA definition of near-zero emissions steel. The agency's 2024 report sets the threshold between 400 and 50 kg of CO2 equivalent per tonne of crude steel, depending on scrap share, and states the definition is physical: it requires deployed technology, without offsets or emissions reduction credits.

Two distinct things sit in the same announcement. Production in Boden meets the physical criterion; the certificate, by design, separates the environmental attribute from the tonne, and the same IEA report lists clarity on chain of custody among the principles for definitions.

What remains open is how each country turns the definition into policy. The IEA treats the threshold as a common language to be adopted in national regulation, and that adoption will decide whether the certificate counts as a reportable reduction or as early finance. For Stegra the effect is already concrete: revenue during ramp-up.