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Abstract

The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm.

Keywords

Frontier commodity green steel sociotechnical imaginaries green transition Sweden

Introduction

In May 2022, then Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson presented a gift to US President Joe Biden: a candle holder made of fossil-free steel engraved ‘A piece of the future’. At this point, German Mercedes Benz and Sweden-based Volvo Cars had begun competing to become the world's first car producer using fossil-free steel from newly built steel mills in Northern Sweden. Within only a few years, fossil-free steel production¹ evolved from technologically and economically improbable to becoming a flagship project for Sweden's international climate leadership. This vision of a green steel future is met with great enthusiasm in Sweden and elsewhere and the associated projects are declared a ‘green industrial revolution’ (Svemin, 2022b), or ‘the biggest industrial investment in Swedish history’ (LKAB, 2022c).

The push for green steel is situated in the Swedish North or Indigenous Sápmi, which is typically narrated as a resource-rich treasure trove. Despite its reputation as an international human rights advocate (Fur, 2013) Sweden has received criticism among others from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and environmental and human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for sidestepping Indigenous Sami concerns (Allard, 2006; Raitio et al., 2020) when continuing to advance its economic interests via the land and resources of the North. The discursive moulding of Sápmi as extractable is not a novel phenomenon. The high North has historically been approached as a “land of the Future” (Sörlin, 1988) and resource pool for national development accompanied by colonial policies of forced displacement segregation and assimilation of the Sami peoples. Today, industrial activities continue to leave their mark on biodiversity and natural habitats in the form of resource extraction, wind, hydropower, infrastructure development, tourism, and forestry (see Normann, 2021; Össbo, 2023).

In this article, we are interested in the imaginaries of such mega-industrial projects and how they work to rearticulate land as places of extraction and commodity-making for green transitions. Recent studies on the making of green frontiers have described how places are reconfigured to make space for green industrial projects, often impacting vulnerable groups of society the hardest (Acosta García and Fold, 2022; Dunlap, 2022). This frontier-making process involves the discursive, political, and physical moulding of a place into a space of extraction (Tsing, 2003: 102). The discursive moulding of places sits at the heart of research on sociotechnical imaginaries (Beck et al., 2021; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009). This literature, which we bring into conversation with the idea of the frontier (Kröger, 2020; Kröger and Nygren, 2020; Peluso and Lund, 2011) helps illustrate the imaginaries of a desired future societal order in the sociotechnical shift from coal to hydrogen-based steel production. It also allows us to understand the future that is envisioned with green steel and alternative green transition trajectories that may be foreclosed.

We introduce the frontier to the sociotechnical system and therewith the sustainability transitions literature by examining how enthusiastic imaginaries or what we refer to as imaginaries of hype about green steel futures in Indigenous Sápmi open pathways towards growth-based green transitions while foreclosing others. We analyse corporate, industry and government narratives of green steel futures in the form of publicly available textual and audio-visual material including recorded seminars and workshops, and reports. We read the collected material as sociotechnical imaginaries (Beck et al., 2021; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) that reinvigorate the North as a national resource and commodity frontier (Kröger, 2020; Peluso and Lund, 2011; Tsing, 2003). By doing so we aim to scrutinise the material consequences of green steel imaginaries in the frontier of the North, or to nuance the hype. We dissect how a particular regional transition trajectory (Coenen et al., 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2019) is made actionable through the green steel imaginary while others are made inaccessible. Focusing on corporate, industry and government voices we illustrate the role of key economic actors in reproducing structural injustices.

The text proceeds by examining the role of Sweden's iron and steel industry and its impact on Indigenous territories. We then present the case of the green steel push in the North. We proceed to the conceptual discussion of sociotechnical imaginaries and frontiers, followed by our approach to the reading of imaginaries as narratives. This leads to the analysis of imaginaries of land, green steel and the self. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the existing literature and Swedish global climate leadership.

Iron and steel in Sweden and Sápmi

Steel has for a long time played a prominent yet controversial role in the Swedish economy. In 1724, three-quarters of Swedish exports were iron products (Isacson, 2018) and in 1913, iron ore comprised more than half of the exchange value at the Stockholm stock exchange (Broberg and Rönnbäck, 2020). Over the past 200 years, iron production transformed from a decentralised activity concentrated in mid-Sweden into a process of highly centralised large-scale production largely concentrated in the North (Ducoing and Olsson-Spjut, 2021). This period also prominently included large railway expansions, initially transporting charcoal from forests to the ironworks in mid-Sweden but later focusing on the commercial feasibility of iron ore mining in the so-called ore fields (Malmfälten) through connections with nearby ports. Swedish iron- and steelworks eventually abandoned charcoal and converted to fossil metallurgical coal, thereby reducing its industry dependency on forestry. Today, the Swedish iron ore mining and steel industry is a small player globally, but its highly specialised products are key to the Swedish economy and EU market. In 2021, bulk iron ore and steel exports such as cars and automotive parts, machinery, and weaponry stood for a third of Swedish export trade value (OEC, n.d.). The iron and steel industry employs around 16,000 people, with additional 26,500 indirect jobs in associated industries (Jernkontoret, 2023). In recent years a new episode of industrial mega-projects linked to an energy transition in the iron and steel sector has been gathering speed in the North.

While commonly celebrated as a source of progress and welfare, Swedish mining is also critiqued as silencing the harms associated with advances on Indigenous Sami lands (Össbo and Lantto, 2011). Swedish interest in the North is here understood as accelerating with silver discoveries in the 1630s when Sápmi was imagined as ‘India within our borders’ (Sörlin, 1988), or ‘the West Indies of the Swedes’ (Ojala and Nordin, 2015). It is argued that Sweden has managed to uphold a national image untainted by colonial implications (Fur, 2013: 26) through its exceptional self-imaginary as colonially innocent, socially and environmentally just (De Leeuw, 2023; Habel, 2012) while involved in overseas colonies and steel provision for the colonial project's slave trade, race biology, civilising efforts, and displacement of the ‘heathen’ Sami population (Körber, 2019; Ojala and Nordin, 2015, 2019). Land lies today at the core of Sami rights advocacy, not least given its symbolic importance in the struggles for survival and recognition implied in colonial imposition (Lundmark, 2008; Ojala and Nordin, 2019). Mining, wind power, hydropower, forestry, and secondary impacts such as infrastructures for the transport of raw materials or energy grids have also been discussed as creating further cumulative pressures (Kløcker Larsen et al., 2017; Österlin and Raitio, 2020; Persson et al., 2017). Most recently, the expansion of ‘green’ industry investments has caused concern among Sami peoples. For instance, a case of wind power expansion that was deemed to be illegally placed but was failed to be dismantled in Norwegian Fosen gathered solidarity engagement also in Swedish administered Sápmi (SvD, 2023). Mining projects such as the planned Gállok iron ore mine have recently been submerged under the framing of green transition efforts, noting that Sweden is the best place and actor to advance mining and that the iron ore that is mined is needed for the green steel transition (De Leeuw, 2024). Sami voices have instead critiqued such greening efforts as a continued expansion through indigenous land under the banner of green colonialism (see Normann, 2021). Scholars have pointed to the greening of extractive activities and to various industrial transition efforts in Sápmi as an increasing threat to Sami lifestyles and livelihoods (Garbis et al., 2023; Össbo, 2023) given existing shortcomings in permit processes and rights recognition (Lawrence and Moritz, 2019; Mörkenstam, 2019). The upscaling of the steel production, its associated extraction and unprecedented energy demand that is associated with Sweden's steel transition have been shown to risk a re-inscription of the North as a resource frontier and to amplify indigenous justice concerns amid increased land pressures (De Leeuw, 2024).

The Swedish interest in green steel production started to gain traction in the mid-2010s (see Kushnir et al., 2020; Vogl, 2023). In 2015 the steel industry business federation developed its vision for 2050 ‘steel shapes a better future’ (Jernkontoret, n.d.). Soon thereafter the HYBRIT (HYdrogen BReakthrough Ironmaking Technology) project was announced to make Swedish steel production fossil-free (Dagens industri, 6 April 2016). Further milestones such as the Swedish climate policy framework in June 2017 and the sectoral roadmaps for steel (Jernkontoret, 2018) and mining (Svemin, 2018; 2022b) cemented the Swedish commitment. The former Social Democratic and Green Party government² made significant financial contributions to the HYBRIT project and supported the decarbonisation in heavy industries through initiatives such as Fossil Free Sweden (Nasiritousi and Grimm, 2022) and the industrial subsidy fund Industriklivet. This article is written in the aftermath of these investments. The right-wing government that has taken over in October 2022 is less visible in claiming international environmental leadership and has backpeddled on various national climate ambitions, however, continues to highlight the importance of green steel and mining investments. The state generally takes a backseat role in the decarbonisation efforts (Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch at Svemin, 2022d) and limits its engagement to providing smooth investment opportunities for green industry ambitions (e.g. permit processes). Nonetheless, the green steel push is highlighted as an example of Swedish EU leadership in the green transition (former minister of business Ibrahim Baylan at Svemin, 2021a). We thereby read the emerging green steel sociotechnical system as a conjoint corporate-state construction.

The Swedish push for fossil-free steel can be described as the sum of three distinct but linked projects. First, three mainly or partly state-owned actors – steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall and mining conglomerate LKAB – created the HYBRIT project. Through HYBRIT, SSAB plans to ‘largely eliminate carbon dioxide emissions’ from its Nordic operations by 2030 (SSAB, 2022a), which has been much heralded nationally and internationally (The Guardian, 19 August 2021). This plan implies that SSAB phases out coal and switches to renewable electricity, with a potential electricity demand of 15–20 TWh (terrawatt hours), or 10% of Swedish current electricity generation (HYBRIT, 2018). Second, H2 Green Steel (henceforth H2GS) is building a new steel mill in Boden. The project, once operational on full scale, will produce five million tonnes of steel annually, which amounts to a doubling of current Swedish steel production capacity (H2GS, 2021; Worldsteel, 2022). H2GS partners with Mercedes Benz, Scania, BMW and other large industrial capital. Third, LKAB aims to shift its business model from delivering iron ore to iron to its steel mills clients. While this sounds like a small change, converting iron ore to iron is the most energy-intensive part of steel production and hence the main driver of electricity demand in the push for green steel.

If realised, the three projects making up the Swedish push for green steel will increase the energy consumption of the Swedish iron and steel sector by a factor of three to four due to the expansion of both steel and iron production. LKAB's plans alone would result in additional electricity demand corresponding to 70 TWh (LKAB, 2022a), which is equivalent to 52% of Sweden's electricity consumption in 2021 (IEA, 2023). However, energy transitions are not limited to technological change in electricity generation or steel production but are embedded in and co-evolve with supply chains (Kushnir et al., 2020; Coenen et al., 2021). One consequence of this is that infrastructures such as wind parks, power grids, transport infrastructure and mining activity are likely to increase in order to supply the amounts of energy and raw materials needed. For example, LKAB expects that the transition ‘places higher demands on fossil-free electricity and more power distribution infrastructure’ (LKAB, 2022a). Furthermore, green iron and green steel are created as two new commodities that, if successfully commercialised, have the potential to shape supply chains in other parts of the world. Finally, a large share of the electricity would be used to produce green hydrogen through splitting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. While green hydrogen is much preferable to so-called grey hydrogen (made from fossil fuels) in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it can cause other environmental and social disturbances when performed on a large scale such as freshwater use, health, and safety impacts (Weidner et al., 2023), as well as an augmented pressure on indigenous land (De Leeuw, 2024). It has been shown that while hydrogen is being heralded as a cornerstone of decarbonisation (Oliveira et al., 2021) hydrogen economies largely fail to break with traditional interconnections to oil and gas infrastructures (Vezzoni, 2024), as well as with other land-intensive extractive activities such as in the case of Swedish steel production (De Leeuw, 2024).

Sociotechnical imaginaries and frontier-making

Broadly speaking, this article builds on literature on the role of imaginaries in paving the way for green transition processes on dedicated land areas. The field of sustainability transitions has attempted to understand how shifts in difficult-to-change systems (e.g. energy systems) are brought about (De Jesus and Mendonça, 2018; Köhler et al., 2019; Stirling, 2014). A subfield focuses here on the role of imaginaries in shaping sustainability transition pathways. While discussed in a wide variety of ways (Rudek, 2022), collectively shared ideas of desired futures (Beck et al., 2021; Hess and Sovacool, 2020; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009; Nikoleris, 2018; Safransky, 2014) are often highlighted as powerful in opening and closing transition pathways (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009; see also Beck et al., 2021; Kuchler and Bridge, 2018; Stirling, 2014). While much of the literature focuses on contestations to dominant imaginaries (see Smith and Tidwell, 2016) our focus lies on understanding the performative potential of dominant visions (here: of green steel) to foreclose alternatives. It is argued that this is done by way of cautioning the in-group about hazards that lie beyond the dominant imaginary (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009: 123), or through their ‘reductive and linear framings’ (Beck et al., 2021: 149). We argue that this homogenising capacity of dominant imaginaries deserves more attention in the transitions literature. We contribute by introducing the concept of hype to grasp the particularly alluring, powerful imaginary that surrounds green transitions.

While transitions research has expanded in recent years, the conceptual contribution that we present speaks to critics that have called for a radical or critical turn towards more just and equitable transitions (Feola, 2020; Köhler et al., 2019). It is argued that much of sustainability transitions and early economic geography literature fails in pushing beyond capitalism and risks reproducing existing power structures (Feola, 2020; Schulz and Bailey, 2014). Recent decolonial, post- and degrowth readings, by which we are inspired in our critique, have contributed to challenging the lingering of transition imaginaries in the growth paradigm's technological solutionism (Hobson and Lynch, 2016; Demaria et al., 2019; Schmid, 2019). The general emphasis on spatial variance in green economic processes is also a promising avenue of thought in regional economic geography scholarship (Coenen et al., 2012, 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2019). Most specifically, the idea of ‘assets’ envisioned in a region is summoned to make transitions that build on legacies of capitalist expansion more plausible than others (Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2018; MacKinnon et al., 2019). Spatiality is conducive in understanding imaginaries of transition attached to dedicated spaces such as the Swedish North. Inspired by such literature, we push critical inquiry further by drawing on the frontiers literature (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018). Frontier-making (Barney, 2009; Eilenberg, 2014) is defined as a specific form of imaginary in which land areas are rendered extractable, inscribed as sacrifice zones for profit accumulation (Valdivia, 2015; Shade, 2015). The concept of frontiers has been extensively studied in contexts of land grabbing and violent displacement (Hall, 2011; 2013; Peluso and Lund, 2011), often by large capital interest to the detriment of subaltern actors in the Global South and other indigenous groups and in ways that link to discussions of (green) colonialism (Lawrence, 2014; Murray Li, 2018; Riofrancos, 2020; Simpson, 2019), most recently highlighting green rearticulations of such land use change (Schmink et al., 2019; Yenneti et al., 2016).

Sociotechnical imaginaries

Our inquiry into the ways in which a radical change to the difficult-to-change system of coal-based steel production comes about (De Jesus and Mendonça, 2018; Köhler et al., 2019; Stirling, 2014) follows the sustainability transitions research focus on the meso-level of sociotechnical change, which is situated somewhere between individual attitudes and the nature of capitalism (Köhler et al., 2019). It is in this subfield to sustainability transitions literature stressed that transformations to sustainability require large-scale, rapid, and multi-faceted changes in traditional sociotechnical systems built on fossil fuels (Geels, 2022; Svensson and Nikoleris, 2018). Sociotechnical systems are comprised of various components such as factories, institutions, knowledge, customs, and beliefs (Geels, 2004) that interact and interlock to form stable and difficult-to-change systems (Seto et al., 2016; Unruh, 2000). As advocated in economic geography critiques of sustainability transition research, another factor that ought to be considered is spatiality, or the ‘socio-spatial relations and dynamics within which transitions evolve’ (Coenen et al., 2012). For transformations to sustainability to be realised system components must be destabilised and realigned in new ways (Savaget et al., 2019), or elsewhere, existing components or locally available ‘assets’ (MacKinnon et al., 2019) may be rearticulated as required for a successful transition. A sociotechnical systems perspective is useful to gain an understanding of change in production systems and emphasises the co-evolvement of technology with institutions, knowledge, and values (Savaget et al., 2019). The shift from coal to hydrogen-based steel production is one such sociotechnical system change.

A particular form of sociotechnical system is one that is not yet realised, one that is merely imagined, articulated as visions for example in so-called industrial roadmaps (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022; Johnson et al., 2021), scenario modelling (van Beek et al., 2020; McLaren and Markusson, 2020) or policy reports (Vogl, 2021). As such, imaginaries are understood as temporally placed in the future, presenting normative visions of social orders that ought to be prioritised (Beck et al., 2021: 144). They are indicative of an in-group's ambitions and indicate ‘purposiveness, action, and aspiration’ (Beck et al., 2021: 145). Such sociotechnical imaginaries can be read as technical roadmaps or normative statements of a desired future societal order (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009). In this way, sociotechnical imaginaries display what is valued, deemed desirable and what are considered objectionable futures towards which we ought not aspire (Beck et al., 2021). The green steel imaginary that is envisioned mainly in company and industry roadmaps and backed by the Swedish state is indicative of one such imagined future.

In order for sociotechnical imaginaries to inform policy making they must be collectively held, institutionally stabilised, and publicly performed (Beck et al., 2021). Dominant imaginaries have the potential of closing down other undesired transition pathways (Stirling, 2008; see also Eadson and Van Veelen, 2023). Such processes are commonly shaped by unequal power relations wherein incumbent interests enjoy a structural advantage. However, attentiveness to alternative visions is an important part of socially inclusive transformations. Critically examining existing dominant sociotechnical imaginaries, then, allows us to ‘open up’ and build more just transition pathways (Beck et al., 2021: 148).

Frontiers

A frontier is a particular type of imaginary in which local geographies (Coenen et al., 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2019) are discursively, politically, and materially moulded into spaces of extraction (Tsing, 2003: 102). Indigenous or subaltern land is often targeted and presented ‘as a periphery, a void, and an empty land that is idle or underutilised’ (Kröger and Nygren, 2020: 367). Existing literature emphasises the frontier-making of colonial settler imaginaries (Inwood and Bonds, 2017; Safransky, 2014; Simpson, 2019), neo-colonial or other advances in which marginalised communities are further dispossessed from their lands (Milne, 2013; Peluso and Lund, 2011; van Teijlingen, 2016). Existing literature has among others focused on maps (Guerrieri, 2019), land use models (Hecht and Rajão, 2020), film (Webb Jekanowski, 2019) and postcards (Waitt and Head, 2002).

That frontiers are being moulded or made infers their constructedness rather than being natural or given (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018: 388). This is important given the taken-for-granted-ness of certain spaces as sacrificed for industrial operations. Once resources are exhausted, market demand fades, local communities push back (Temper et al., 2015), or political conditions change, frontiers may close and move on (Kröger and Nygren, 2020). Wherever frontiers are made existing relationalities to land are resolved to reconfigure resource use conventions (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018: 390). Such reconfigurations allow powerful actors to create conditions for new opportunities of resource extraction (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018: 391). The Swedish resource frontier of the North is not novel but has historically been moulded as a land of opportunity. It is discussed as having undergone various waves of frontier-making in which green industry advances is the latest (see Össbo, 2023). Instead of moving on, the frontier of the North is in the context of the green transition reinforced, its ‘assets’ highlighted to underpin its extractability and be reinvented as a green extractive frontier.

Existing literature has specified different frontier types such as commodity (Nevins and Peluso, 2008) and resource frontiers (Kröger and Nygren, 2020). Frontiers have also been discussed vis-à-vis processes of primitive accumulation, privatisation, or enclosure (Peluso and Lund, 2011), ‘zones of exclusion’ (Käkönen and Thuon, 2019) and dispossession (Lund, 2018) or sacrificed spaces (Scott and Smith, 2018; Shade, 2015; Valdivia, 2015) of extraction, pointing to the violence inherent in frontier-making. While frontiers are often associated with environmentally questionable production or extraction processes, there has been a recent emergence of the notion of green frontiers (Acosta García and Fold, 2022; Schmink et al., 2019; Yenneti et al., 2016), where land is made available for green industry interests.

Imaginaries of hype in frontier- and commodity-making

As was presented above, we follow the call toward a more radical inquiry into sustainability transitions. We do so by (1) introducing the notion of the frontier to that of sociotechnical change and (2) inquiring the consequences that follow from imaginaries of hype in growth-based green transitions. Combining the concepts of frontier-making with sociotechnical imaginaries allows us to elucidate how visions of desirable green steel futures play out on dedicated land areas in Indigenous Sápmi. We suggest that by reinscribing Sweden's resource frontier a green resource and commodity dimension the transition trajectory towards hydrogen-based steel production can be imagined as the most plausible pathway on an already sacrificed frontier (see Coenen et al., 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2019). It is imperative to focus on spatiality and the role of local legacies of earlier capitalist expansions in articulations of green technological solutions to grasp the potential flipside of growth-driven transition efforts.

Much of the existing literature that leans on the conceptual apparatus of sociotechnical systems focuses on energy transitions, and here often on contestations of dominant imaginaries of energy futures (Delina, 2018; Longhurst and Chilvers, 2019; Smith and Tidwell, 2016). We have instead chosen to focus on the dominant imaginary of green steel and pay attention to its silences and performative power to foreclose alternative visions. We understand imaginaries to be collectively held visions of desired futures at the same time as they identify threats posed by hazardous alternatives (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009: 123). We acknowledge imaginaries’ performative potential to make certain futures more and others less attainable (Beck et al., 2021). We are interested in the sociotechnical imaginaries in which a green steel future is presented as viable on specific land, or the frontier (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018) of the North.

We aim to analyse the role of hype in legitimising the materialisation of sociotechnical system change towards a green steel future. We suggest that green transition imaginaries such as that of green steel incorporate a sentiment of enthusiasm, or hype, that is especially adept to foreclosing alternatives. With hype we refer to a sense of unwavering, indisputable excitement for green steel as a novel commodity and hydrogen as a promising transition pathway. In fact, the concept of hype has been introduced alongside hydrogen (Bakker, 2010; Sperling and Cannon, 2004; Zhu and Wei, 2022) and other green transition pathways, though, rather to inquire the probability of success of these transitions to trigger either ‘hope or hype’, where hype seems to signal a failure of a given vision to materialise. Instead, we read hype in sociotechnical shifts as imaginaries charged with high levels of anticipatory enthusiasm, collectively trusted to result in the desired outcome. Imaginaries of hype, then, exceed in their performative capacity not only due to the future that is promised once the sociotechnical shift is realised but also due to an inferred harmful alternative that may materialise if one were to miss out (Kester et al., 2020). Some have stressed the positive consequences of hype in generating investment (Bakker, 2010). We argue that hype indeed functions as a necessary part of frontier-making to attract capital and create demand for green steel, but that this inflow of capital fuelled by hype risk overshadowing the downsides of such investment. We suggest that hype functions to silence attention to past and present injustices and thereby fails to construct an inclusive transition. Hype effectively narrows down other conceivable transition pathways (Stirling, 2008) as it precludes nuance, deliberation, and dissent. As such, we understand hype to control what Jacques Rancière has referred to as the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière, 2010: 37) – it determines ‘what can be seen and not, felt and not, thought and not, and, as a result, between what is politically possible and not’ (Bleiker, 2018: 20). Hype is a ‘straightening device’ (Ahmed, 2007: 159) through which linearity and singularity is congratulated. Hype allows for silences to be accepted, hidden away in the enthusiasm of the taken-for-granted path of the growth-based decarbonisation trajectory. In these silences, then, reside alternative perspectives and experiences among others of Sami peoples that are neglected by the enthusiasm of green steel imaginaries. These hidden-away spaces are ‘filled with explosive counter tales’ (Brown, 2005: 84) of opportunity. To allow for these voices and their potential grievances relative to hydrogen-based steel production to be recognised, then, would require a nuancing or dismantling of hype. In this way, we read hype as central to reinvigorating an existing frontier and to dismiss alternative land-use visions. An inquiry into the performative power of hype yields a promising contribution to the land, frontiers, and transitions literature's endeavour of understanding the emergence and availability of transition pathways, as well as to the injustices that may emerge from inattentive sociotechnical shifts.

Reading performative imaginaries

This article builds on a narrative reading of textual and audiovisual data that outlines a desired green steel future. The data consists of corporate and government sources in the form of industry roadmaps (reports, website content, strategy videos, information campaigns, press conferences, and industry seminars). This selection is informed by our interest in strategically formulated visions of green steel futures. The intentional quality of roadmaps speaks to this interest better than interview or other data. While there is an equal share of existing research on sociotechnical imaginaries that has used interviews or various forms of documents (Rudek, 2022) we suggest that corporate visions of the future are more meticulously outlined in strategy roadmaps.

We engage in a narrative analysis and advance a critique based on the deconstruction of meaning inherent in sociotechnical imaginaries and their performative capacity in frontier-making processes. We follow a rather broad definition of narratives as expressions of desired futures and read sociotechnical imaginaries in their narrative form. These imaginaries – expressed discursively through text or imagery – have performative potential in that they aid in delimiting the realm of opportunity for future action (Patterson and Monroe, 1998). For instance, a narrative that reinforces the necessity of increased steel production aids in imagining the possibility of a future built with steel, and makes a future of, say, degrowth less accessible in our imaginative capacity.

Narratives may be strategically expressed to persuade an audience or may elsewhere serve as the stories that actors tell to ensure credibility in their surrounding (Andrews et al., 2015). Our focus lies with information material about the endeavours associated with the version of the green steel transition that is imagined as desirable. Credibility can be achieved by narrating events in consistency with already established knowledge structures, for instance, by referencing the assumed vastness of the Swedish North in arguments of industrial expansion. Discourse, instead, constitutes ‘not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said’ (Barad, 2008: 137). Actors are not functioning as pre-social in their storytelling but are embedded in such discourse or discursive repertoire (Somers, 1994) that guides them, a common perception of reality. Actors are constrained and enabled by this structure, yet have agency in reinforcing, reproducing or else discursively challenging it (Patterson and Monroe, 1998).

The data was selected by identifying actors that have formulated publicly accessible narratives in which green steel futures are envisioned. These are national and local government representatives, industry, and company (e.g. Svemin, the HYBRIT companies, H2GS), as well as state initiatives such as Fossil Free Sweden. The actors that are most active in this shaping of the shift in sociotechnical systems are most frequently represented in the data. This is important to give an accurate account of the architects of the green steel sociotechnical future. The attentive reader will notice that corporate actors are most active, though, it is important to remember that the government vocally and financially supports corporate green steel initiatives. Decarbonisation of the steel industry is also guided through the state initiative Fossil Free Sweden, all of which makes the corporate-state divide less obvious. Key texts, speeches, pre-recorded workshops, and documents were identified in which actors present their vision of fossil-free steel and related mining and energy operations. Once the key texts were identified, the data was inquired by asking a set of questions; How is the shift to a new sociotechnical system narrated? What kind of future is envisioned amid the sociotechnical shift? What discursive tools are used to present the green steel future as desirable?

Theory-informed open coding was performed by the two authors individually in the qualitative data analysis network NVivo, followed by a comparison of the respective identified patterns. Given our interdisciplinary background in engineering and political science respectively, the two-fold coding process yielded interesting points of friction, overlap and discussion. The purpose of this coding process was to identify patterns in the data, rather than to quantify our results. The codes that were identified point to three main components of the sociotechnical imaginary of the green steel transition: (1) the North as the ultimate location for the transition, (2) the imaginary of the materiality of green steel itself, and (3) the Swedish self as the ideal driver of change.

Analysis

One of the most frequent elements of the sociotechnical imaginaries of green steel futures is an emphasis on climate urgency, in which climate change is acknowledged as the ‘greatest test of our times’ (LKAB, 2020). This sense of urgency makes it possible to advance a shift in a difficult-to-change system. Traditional coal-based steel production is presented as dirty and contributing gravely to current emissions levels. Still, steel is constructed as an essential building block of our modern lives. This vision of today's dirty but indispensable access to steel requires a solution. The move toward green steel reinforces the importance of steel and iron ore in our societies, while breaking with the dangers of the old steel industry through novel, breaking-edge technology (5.2). The Swedish self is here imagined as the optimal driver of such change (5.3). Green steel allows for a discursive shift, in which the problem becomes ‘part of the solution’ (LKAB, 2022c). Steel comes to manifest a necessity for planetary survival. What is required for this historic shift, however, is the ideal location (5.1).

Imagining the land of the North

The North is throughout the data constructed as a ‘unique’ (Nordmark, mayor of Boden, 2022) space that is exceptionally vast, resource and energy abundant, and favourable in its proximity to existing transport and gridlines; ‘it's pretty scary almost’ (Mix at H2GS, 2021b). It is its unique qualities that make the transition possible, the lack of which has hindered others to pursue this challenging undertaking elsewhere. As Chairman of H2GS Harald Mix states at a press conference, “[…] there is only one ideal location for this venture” (2021b). Only here a green future can be realised alongside prosperity and job security, while strengthening Swedish environmental leadership and competitiveness (Fossil Free Sweden, 2022a). It is stressed that the land ought to be put to proper use, to “make the most of the unique opportunities that exist in [the province of] Norrbotten” (Mix at H2GS, 2021b). The qualities that are highlighted are its supposedly superior ore and large areas of available land, existing energy gridlines, infrastructure, mining expertise and other industry relics from earlier industrial advances (H2GS, 2021b, 2022; SSAB at Jernkontoret, 2022; Svemin, 2022c). Speaking to bedrock quality, former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (2019a) urges, “Since we are gifted with these assets, we should of course make use of them to the greatest extent possible”. The emphasis on not letting opportunities go to waste resembles the idea that land ought to be used by those who ‘improve’ upon it, an argument which has historic prevalence in Sweden as elsewhere. What is missing from this sense of opportunity are reflections on the historic implications of existing industrial infrastructure as resulting from previous waves of industrialisation and colonial policy (e.g. the construction of the Iron Ore Railway in the 1880s functioned to withdraw resources for the international market).

At various presentations, the government coordinator for industrial investments Peter Larsson shows a map of Sweden turned upside down with a troubled North placed as the new financial centre in the South, highlighting the importance of the green industry development (Jernkontoret, 2022). Similarly, in their strategy video, H2GS illustrates the frontier of the North stating: “We have set our sight on Northern Sweden to be the accelerators of green steel” (H2GS, 2022). The voice-over is accompanied by up-beat music and images of northern lights over snow-covered mountains, a bird view gaze over vast lands. Here lies the promise of the green transition, with an opportunity for “a super cost-efficient plant with the absolute lowest CO₂ footprint, if you do it in the right location” (H2GS, 2021b). The voice-over continues by referencing resource and energy abundance and rich knowledge in mining, shepherded by an image of a reindeer herd running through the snow. The association of the green steel investment with romanticised Sami culture (here symbolised through reindeer) is visible also in state-owned energy company Vattenfall's green steel narrative. Accounting for its role in the HYBRIT project's emissions reduction, a strategy video shows images of a factory covered in smog, thereafter an off-shore wind turbine, followed by a vast river landscape zooming in on the infamous Akkats power plant. Vattenfall has gained critique for decorating the hydropower plant with Sami symbolism of cultural and religious importance, all the same disturbing traditional lands and herding paths (Aftonbladet, 4 September 2005). Still, Akkats and other imageries of sustainable energy are used to tell stories of compatibility and co-existence, of harmony with nature and Indigenous peoples. Illustrative of this invoked harmony is also the Swedish mining industry motto ‘mining with nature’ (Svemin, 2022b).

The two indirect hints to Sami existence (images of reindeer herds and Sami inspired art) are the only representations of Indigenous peoples in the official storytelling of Swedish green steel and are paired with voice-overs that invoke sustainability, resource abundance, and vast opportunities to accomplish fossil-free production. The green transition is here visibly divorced from justice concerns. Instead, the greening of industry is narrated as working alongside and indeed for the benefit of traditional livelihoods. It reflects an assumption that Indigenous peoples, romanticised as situated within nature, can thrive as does the environment now that industries are transforming, thereby dismissing the relevance of potential human rights concerns. The fusion of the imagery of land, northern lights, reindeer and Sami-inspired art with enthusiasm, or hype, about resource deposits and energy abundance reinforces negligence of Sami presence in the North more generally. While mining and energy production is widely critiqued for its intrusion in Sápmi (Fur, 2013; Kløcker Larsen et al., 2017; Lawrence and Åhrén, 2017) the negative impacts of renewable energy production and its pressures on land, people and ecosystems (Ramasar et al., 2022) are disregarded in the telling of a green steel future.

This narrative presented reproduces a greened version of the colonial logic of no man's land, with the frontier envisioned as unclaimed and void of historic relationalities prior to ore discovery. The construction of the land as lacking importance beyond steel is also evident in the excitement about ‘putting the region on the map’ (H2GS, 2021b) with the help of green investments. The imagery used reproduces a romanticised idea of the North that resembles the allure of the historic understanding of Sápmi as the ‘Land of the Future’ (Sörlin, 1988). These romanticised sentiments culminate in the H2GS chairman's amazement with their prospective industrial site, ‘it's so beautiful, you know, incredible’ (H2GS, 2021b), alongside a presentation slide of mountains embracing a still lake. The beauty of the untouched land narrated as an enticing stimulus for extraction resembles conventional expansionary logics of feminised virgin land, as scenic in its wilderness, unorderly and ready to be tamed (Merchant, 1980). The land of the North is in the data moulded (Tsing, 2003) into a frontier that logically ought to be extracted, beautiful in its abundance and potential. Triggering hype by invoking the beauty of the land allows for a frontier for green industry to take place that harmoniously coincides with lush nature and the vague idea of Indigenous peoples.

Related to the imaginary of the North as open and empty, there is concern voiced over lengthy, bureaucratic permit processes (Svemin, 2018, 2021b; Jernkontoret, 2023). It is stressed that to uphold the North's exceptionally competitive status, ‘obstacles along the way need to be removed’ (Svemin, 2018: 6). Here, the government takes a more active role in the smoothing out of what is perceived as a bumpy process (Ulf Kristersson at Jernkontoret, 2021a; Ebba Busch at Svemin, 2022d) by providing more predictable permit processes for the sake of competitiveness (Jernkontoret, 2018) and efficient climate investments (Svemin, 2022a). The reference to efficiency illustrates the imagined necessity of an open frontier for the green transition, profitability, and global green steel leadership. Prolonged permit processes (that involve environmental assessments and consultations) are perceived as ‘obstacles’ for industrial projects that may jeopardise the crops that the land is imagined yielding (Jernkontoret, 2018).

Imagining the materiality of green steel

The new commodity of green steel is referenced with enthusiasm, an essential material for a sustainable future (Fossil Free Sweden, 2019b; Löfven, 2020; H2GS, 2022). Green steel imaginaries discursively disassociate from an unsustainable past, portraying hydrogen-produced steel as more natural and valuable than traditional steel (SSAB, 2018b; Vattenfall, 2019; LKAB, 2022c). For example, SSAB presents the waste product of green steel production as a single drop of water running down a glass surface, or a water bottle with the caption ‘pure waste’ (SSAB, 2022b). By disassociating steel from emissions, industrial expansion is imagined as compatible with sustainability (Vattenfall, 2020a). Coal-based steel was the problem and now steel becomes ‘part of the solution’ (LKAB, 2022c). This mindset underpins the viability of current extraction and consumption-oriented lifestyles.

As was discussed above, the North continues to be framed as a traditional mining land (Ulf Kristersson at Jernkontoret, 2021a; Vattenfall, 2021) or the ‘mining and metals mecca of Sweden’ (Mix at H2GS, 2021b), normalising further engagement. The CEO of LKAB presents the HYBRIT project saying, ‘mining is extremely important for this region of Sweden’ (LKAB CEO Jan Moström at Vattenfall, 2021). Steel is constructed as a historic identity marker of the Swedish North and is now re-imagined as a clean product in a natural continuation of the frontier's designated potential. As a local mayor notes, “Steel from Norrbotten has been known as quality steel, and we are very happy to be known for green steel in the future” (H2GS, 2021b). In this way, material legacies of earlier industrial and colonial expansion (harbours, train tracks, roads, gridlines, etc.), narrated as relics for a hopeful, green and modern future allow for a colonially innocent, green rearticulation of the frontier.

The data also displays a preference of mining over recycling for green steel production, which indicates a sociotechnical future that equates extraction with progress, development, well-being and environmentalism. Investors are invited to a ‘hard rock paradise’ (Mining for Generations, n.d.a) and Sweden's former minister of business Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson highlights his enthusiasm for continued extraction stating that, “It's not that we take environmental issues lightly, but yes, we love mines in the Social Democrats” (Aftonbladet, 30 November 2021). The love for mines that accompanies the green industry expansion lacks consideration of the environmental viability of consumption and material-intense living, and of iron ore as a non-renewable, finite resource. Steel can either be made from iron ore or from recycled steel scrap, the latter being a much less energy- and mining-intensive production method. Despite these advantages of recycling, Swedish green steel projects continue to focus primarily on an expansion of newly mined iron ore by referencing modern needs and that recycling existing materials is not enough (Jernkontoret, 2017; Jernkontoret, 2021b; SSAB, 2020; Svemin, 2022c). Research suggests that this need for extraction is over-emphasised (Pauliuk et al., 2013) and that various opportunities exist to reduce the reliance on steel in services from housing to mobility (Allwood and Cullen, 2012). Still, the Swedish fondness of virgin ore is constructed as critical for a sustainable future by referencing sustainability markers such as wind turbines and electric cars (LKAB, 2022c; Ebba Busch at Svemin, 2022d).

The data frequently invokes the essential function of steel in the general public's lives; ‘cutlery in the kitchen, it is jewellery, hip joints and scalpels’ (Löfven, 2019b), former PM Stefan Löfven stressed at the inauguration of the HYBRIT pilot plant. However, the Swedish push for green steel is tailored directly to the automotive industry (H2GS, 2021; SSAB, n.d.). While most steel is sold from business to business, car producers sell their products to end consumers, which allows them to pass on the higher costs that the greening of steel entails to the consumer in exchange for the symbolic and moral value of driving what are marketed as planet-friendly cars. In a market-led decarbonisation of steel the automotive sector becomes a prime vehicle for creating demand for green steel, and in extension drives an expansion of mining, wind power and steel production. In such an imaginary, the private car is perpetuated as an essential good and means of transportation despite its role in transitions to sustainability being much contested.

Demand for the new commodity is also created by narrating green steel as desirable in its high value relative to conventionally produced steel and other metals. Energy company Vattenfall infers in their green steel strategy an environmental upside to green steel consumption. British rapper Stefflon Don enters a jewellery store and is presented with grillz made of fossil-free steel, with the caption ‘We believe there's a metal more valuable than gold’ (Vattenfall, n.d.). While such imagery may fuel general demand in fossil-free steel products, the desirability of green steel prompted here goes beyond the automotive industry. What is sold is an idea in which guilt-free consumption is made accessible and enthusiasm for what is presented as a clean commodity is encouraged not only as fashionable but also as environmentally conscious.

Another selling point is the renewable energy that will feed into the production process, which is depicted as more natural and as less intrusive than conventional energy provision. Despite its impacts (Dunlap and Arce, 2022), renewable energy infrastructure is shown as integrated into pristine landscapes: a single off-shore wind turbine, a family of turbines towering over a vast landscape, its silhouettes contrasting a sunset that paints the sky, or wild river rapids without human interference as a proxy for hydropower (LKAB, 2022b; Vattenfall, 2020b, 2022). The bottleneck in the power grid that today limits the amount of electricity that can be transported to Southern Sweden is narrated as an opportunity that makes investment in the North even more important as not to lose out on its abundance (H2GS, 2021a). What is not addressed in the assumed naturalness of a renewable green steel future fuelled by green hydrogen are the potential additional pressures on ecosystems such as large needs of biomass, large space use for wind power and electricity grids, potential freshwater use problems associated with green hydrogen production in the area, nor the Indigenous justice concerns that emerge from these unprecedented pressures.

Imagining Sweden's green steel leadership

The self that is performed in the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel is one that given its expertise carries the responsibility to spearhead the transition. In the data, the activities involved in steel production (mining, steel processing) are envisioned as more environmentally friendly and socially benign than similar activities elsewhere and that they should therefore be performed to a greater extent in Sweden (SSAB, 2017; Fossil Free Sweden, 2019b; Thorwaldsson at Jernkontoret, 2021a). It is argued that global emissions and environmental harm would decrease with more Swedish steel produced (Jernkontoret, 2018; Svemin, 2018). In fact, ‘Sweden's ore deposits will do the world good’ (Mining for Generations, n.d.b). This also builds on a simplistic assumption of a perfect global market in which the onshoring of the production of certain goods in Sweden (Riofrancos, 2022) results in reduced production elsewhere. Swedish ore and steel products are presented as manifesting a good deed, a generous contribution to the world or EU market. As such, a sense of extractive exceptionalism (De Leeuw, 2023) informs the idea of expansion of the Swedish mining and steel sector as the socially and environmentally responsible choice, silencing alternative, non-extractive climate imaginaries.

The Swedish push for green steel is also imagined as fuelling global leadership by developing a new steel production technology (Baylan at Svemin, 2021a; Fossil Free Sweden, 2022b; Vattenfall, 2022). By accessing existing treasures of the North, Sweden can aid other countries not as endowed with the preconditions of steelmaking. This allows Sweden to claim a position of assistance in the international community while advancing its competitiveness (Baylan at Fossil Free Sweden, 2019a, 2022a) by onshoring industrial activities. Thus, the incentive for reinforcing colonial relations through extraction at home is discursively constructed as benevolence in international climate mitigation comradery. There is also frequent reference to figures such as António Guterres and Ursula von der Leyen and the trust they have put in Sweden's climate leadership (Lövin, 2020). The self is constructed as taking responsibility to lead the global green ‘revolution’ (Svemin, 2022b) through its ‘brave’ investment (SSAB, 2020) in fossil-free steel.

The data also points to an ambition to become the world's first fossil-free welfare state (Jernkontoret, 2018; Löfven, 2019b; Svemin, 2018) by discursively merging industrial ambitions, environmentalism and welfare objectives. Sweden is narrated as inspiring others that a fossil-free future that is compatible with economic growth and welfare indeed is possible. There is a clear sense of pride pertaining to the role as a nation spearheading the green transition, developing the innovation technology that does not jeopardise welfare through decarbonisation and that could be exported and adopted by others, thereby making a ‘great contribution for a fossil-free world’ (SSAB, 2018a; see also LKAB, 2020). Such dutiful self-imaginary is also evident in reference to human rights abuses elsewhere, with the Swedish mining sector taking responsibility for global justice by welcoming investments. Former minister of business Ibrahim Baylan references unsustainable mining practices elsewhere in a parliament debate:

We read in newspapers and the media that child labour is used, rivers have been polluted or employees have been exploited. I am therefore pleased that these investment plans exist and that there are major plans to expand mining operations in our country. (Baylan, 2020)

The self is instead one void of environmental, human and labour rights concern, with the expansion of mining in Sweden welcomed as an opportunity to contribute to a more just global market. The ‘aim to build a world on green steel’ (H2GS, 2022) with the North as its facilitator (5.1) is presented as an opportunity that allows Sweden to imagine itself as steering toward a hopeful future even in times of (COVID-19, employment and climate) crises, with great ‘faith in the future’ (Löfven, 2020). At the inauguration of the HYBRIT pilot plant, then PM Löfven summarised the green steel investment as one of optimism about a brighter future, as giving hope to rebuild the nation with green steel.

From unemployment and climate threats, green jobs with zero emissions can soon sprout. […] Together we will build Sweden out of the crisis. (Löfven, 2020)

The new commodity of green steel is envisioned as the building block for a better future. The Keynesian-inspired endeavour of building oneself out of crises aligns with the data's general emphasis on resource-heavy living, industrial expansion and acceleration. It is presented as logical that more material is needed to allow for such a future to be built. This emphasis on production upscale contrasts with evidence around the practical impossibility of decoupling resource use from economic growth (Degrowth New Roots Collective, 2020; Hickel and Kallis, 2020) and associated calls for dematerialisation (Kallis, 2017).

In the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, it is the duty of a nation as gifted with resource deposits as Sweden to invest in green steel and accelerate the transition; its vast resource deposits and land, its unique bravery to ‘face the biggest technological shift in steel production in a thousand years’ (Löfven, 2020), and its clean and just mining processes. The imagery that invigorates this enthusiastic self-imaginary consists of children running through a meadow towards the horizon upon which the sun sets idyllically, a child on a train looking ahead in anticipation (H2GS, 2022), and a baby's hand grasping a mother's finger alongside the voice-over ‘for future generations and their jobs’ (LKAB, 2020). The vast frontier upon which the children run towards the sunset, towards a brighter future, is portrayed as serene and open to explore for new generations to prosper. Green steel here symbolises hope for human survival in times of climate crisis, with opportunities for a brighter and greener tomorrow envisioned on the frontier of the North.

Conclusion

By introducing the frontiers literature (Hall, 2011; Peluso and Lund, 2011) to the sociotechnical imaginaries framework (Beck et al., 2021; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) we recognise intersecting commodity- and resource-based frontier-making in the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel (Kröger and Nygren, 2020). The green steel sociotechnical imaginary taps into and revives the old resource frontier by emphasising the importance of increased Swedish ore extraction and land for infrastructure and industry expansion. Enthusiasm about the mining history of the North is used to reinforce the existing resource frontier, but also to present the region as the logical place for further extraction, processing and commodity-making given its abundance of ore, energy, industry expertise and infrastructure. We thereby expand the existing understanding of green frontiers (Acosta García and Fold, 2022) by showing how existing resource frontiers can be reinforced and reinvented through green commoditisation in transitions, and by highlighting material consequences of these frontier-making processes (Tsing, 2005) and formulations of unjust green transition designs. We expand the literature's focus on how frontiers are ‘opened, collapsed, re-opened, or closed’ (Kröger and Nygren, 2020: 367; see also Rasmussen and Lund, 2018) with an emphasis on existing frontiers’ green rearticulation.

Our analysis of the Swedish push for green steel illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other transition pathways. The green steel transition not only illustrates a rearticulation of an existing resource frontier but also involves the construction of green steel as a new commodity for the global market. In this way, processes of resource-making and commodity-making intersect. What is central is the infusion of hype in resource/commodity-making as a totalising sociotechnical system that effectively cancels out alternative imaginaries. We speak to inquiries in frontiers literature into the ways in which frontier expansion functions to preclude other land use (Milne, 2013; Simpson, 2019; Van Teijlingen, 2016). We have found that hype is created through stories of exceptionalism in which the land, the self and the new commodity are perceived as capable of building a sustainable, just, and profitable future. Green steel is imagined as more natural and valuable than other metals and produced without discernible environmental and social risks. The green steel sociotechnical imaginary selectively omits colonial and other violent implications of frontier-making linked to past and present iron and steel ventures, which can have severe consequences not least for Sami peoples. Hype creates a tunnel vision also amid carbon emissions as the sole classification of ‘green’, beautifies green industry and energy, and downplays the scale of planned projects dramatically by disregarding the vast amount of land needed for additional mines, energy and infrastructure expansion. The green steel imaginary will likely shift the problem from carbon to other socioecological and biodiversity issues. The discursive compliance with existing legacies of historic colonial expansion (infrastructure, mines, etc.) reproduces colonial power dynamics that reinforce the vision of the high North as empty and renders the Sami peoples at best as romanticised tools to allure investors or indeed as non-existent, disposable. The green steel sociotechnical system is constructed on an ahistorical and environmentally flawed foundation. The hype that surrounds green steel provides the preconditions for a depoliticised greening of the frontier and precludes scrutiny of past and present harm.

The findings also carry lessons for the growing research on sustainability transitions (see Coenen et al., 2021), particularly in its emphasis on the material effects of imaginaries of hype on unjust green transition trajectories. The findings also contribute to debates on place framing (Binz et al., 2020; Feola et al., 2023) and help to highlight the rearticulation of regional ‘assets’ as legitimising factors for green industrial expansion (MacKinnon et al., 2019; Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2018). In the case of Swedish steel, stories of niche technologies (Smith and Raven, 2012) are presented as desirable by selectively referencing certain place-based memories over others (Feola et al., 2023), for example, industrial expansion over Indigenous realities. Proponents of green steel thereby reinforce the colonial idea of the North as a vast and alluring treasure trove. Colonial and biodiversity implications of industrial expansion are neglected, and a romanticised hint of the Sami and reference to untouched nature are used to suggest harmonious coexistence. Meanwhile, what are presented as regional assets in the imaginary of a green steel future are themselves products of extractive harm. In this way, referencing existing infrastructure relics from past expansion can become a highly problematic activity that reinforces past injustices. We suggest that more attention should be paid to this normalised integration of past industry expansion into the imaginaries of green futures as they reproduce structural injustices in sustainability transitions.

Given the risk for an unjust green transition in steel and elsewhere, we suggest there is a need to nuance the hype of green steel to open up (Stirling, 2008) for alternative imaginaries. This should not be read as an attempt to endanger environmental transformation, but rather, as a plea for inclusive imaginaries of green futures that allow for democratic deliberation and dissent and make possible more creative transition pathways. We see in green transitions as they are formulated today a real risk of sacrificing inclusive and just processes for the sake of competitiveness. We therefore urge for caution in sociotechnical shifts to allow for concerned voices to be included in transition processes rather than letting the loud noise of the green hype eclipse them. This is important to ensure inclusive environmental futures. An alternative environmental leadership that nuances hype and allows for democratic deliberation must challenge obedience to accelerating extraction and production and ensure sincere dialogue with affected communities that is attentive to neo-colonial and extractive transgressions.

Highlights

Green steel sociotechnical imaginaries free up spaces of extraction for the global green commodity demand.

Green steel imaginaries build on relics of past industrial advances and reinforce structural environmental injustices.

Green steel hype helps disregard democratic deliberation and dissent and paves the way for unjust transition trajectories.

Green transition hype excludes alternative transition pathways.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants of the workshop on Just Transition and the Role of the State at the 2022 Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference (NESS) and the panel on Critical Perspectives on Sustainability Transformations at the Lund University PhD conference on Sustainable Development for valuable comments and discussions.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Georgia de Leeuw

Notes

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Scrutinising commodity hype in imaginaries of the Swedish green steel transition

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Iron and steel in Sweden and Sápmi

Sociotechnical imaginaries and frontier-making

Sociotechnical imaginaries

Frontiers

Imaginaries of hype in frontier- and commodity-making

Reading performative imaginaries

Analysis

Imagining the land of the North

Imagining the materiality of green steel

Imagining Sweden's green steel leadership

Conclusion

Highlights

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References