Green Steel Study Calls for 5-Cent Power and Hydrogen Price Guarantee as Saarland Industry Battles AfD
Published on 07/01/2026 at 03:16 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
A new analysis from the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung warns that Germany risks losing its steel industry unless the state provides aggressive support. Published on June 29, the study by researchers Krebs and Kaczmarczyk demands an industrial electricity price of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour and a hydrogen price guarantee of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. To secure annual production of 40 million tonnes of crude steel, they also call for mandatory green steel procurement by public entities and higher import tariffs, with those levies scheduled to take effect as early as July 2026. The bottom line, according to the authors: green steel is necessary but vulnerable, and without active government intervention, the energy-intensive transition could prove economically fatal.
Those demands arrive as political tensions flare in the Saarland, where the steel sector directly props up entire communities around mills like the one in Völklingen. On June 30, both the leadership of the Stahl-Holding-Saar (SHS) and the works council at Saarstahl launched an unusually sharp attack on Carsten Becker, the state head of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The exact content of the statements was not disclosed, but the conflict signals a deepening rift between the region’s key industrial players and a party whose rise coincides with the industry’s existential crisis.
Compounding the pressure, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) released its 2025 annual report on the same day, June 30. The agency has placed the entire AfD under heightened surveillance nationwide. Membership has climbed to around 70,000, of whom authorities classify about 28,000 as right-wing extremists — an increase of 8,000 compared to the previous year. Particular concern surrounds the party’s youth wing, Generation Deutschland, which the Verfassungsschutz president, Selen, warned shows both personnel and programmatic continuity with the dissolved Junge Alternative.
In this charged environment, calls for a formal ban of the AfD have grown louder. Green party co-leader Banaszak is pushing for deeper discussion, while CSU politician Alexander Dobrindt remains skeptical. The steel industry’s direct confrontation with the party adds a new, local dimension to a debate that until now has played out mainly in Berlin and in the courts.
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