Hydrogen is usually framed as a future fuel. For tungsten powder producer Wolfram Bergbau, however, hydrogen has never been about powering a machine or replacing fossil fuels. It is a critical chemical input in tungsten powder production. Through a long-term agreement with Energie Steiermark, Wolfram is fully replacing grey hydrogen with green hydrogen, reducing emissions by changing the source of this critical input rather than the production process itself. Here, Andreas Bock, senior project manager, and Franz Schwarzl, expert indirect procurement for energy and chemicals explain more.
Under a long-term agreement with Styria’s regional energy provider, Energie Steiermark, Wolfram will become the key customer for a new proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis facility being built in Bergla, around a kilometre from its St. Martin im Sulmtal site in the southwestern part of Styria. The plant will produce up to 750 tonnes of green hydrogen each year, delivered via a direct underground pipeline to Wolfram, replacing grey hydrogen produced from methane through steam reformation.
As one of the first tungsten powder producers to fully replace grey hydrogen with green hydrogen in a core production process at industrial scale, Wolfram is reducing emissions by changing the source of this critical input rather than the production process itself while supporting the company’s ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The more interesting story, however, lies beneath the announcement. It isn’t simply about adopting green hydrogen. It’s about understanding why a tungsten producer needs hydrogen in the first place, and why that requirement cannot easily be engineered away.
Why hydrogen?
Bock likes to explain Wolfram’s raw material by comparing it to gold. The two metals share almost exactly the same density at a little over 19 kilograms per litre. But gold occurs in nature as a native metal, while tungsten doesn’t. It occurs only in oxidised minerals such as scheelite and Wolframite, bound to oxygen, calcium and iron. To produce tungsten metal powder, Wolfram must first remove that oxygen through a carefully controlled reduction process.
“To go from tungsten oxide to tungsten metal, you need a reducing agent, something that will take the oxygen away,” Bock explains. “The cheapest route would normally be a carbon source: coal, methane, even wood or sugar. But tungsten reacts with carbon almost immediately, and what you get is tungsten carbide, not tungsten metal. We need the metal first, so carbon-based reduction isn’t an option for us at that stage.”
Hydrogen prevents this problem, but also brings a second advantage. “Hydrogen reacts with the tungsten oxide as a gas flowing over a solid powder, so we get controlled, even reduction across the material,” Bock says. “It isn’t only about avoiding carbide formation, it’s about process control, and hydrogen gives us that in a way other reducing agents do not.”
This is why hydrogen is fundamental to Wolfram’s production route: it is the reactant that converts tungsten oxide into metal powder.
Discussions around industrial decarbonisation often focus on developing entirely new manufacturing technologies. But in reality, some of the greatest opportunities lie in improving processes that industry has relied on for decades. For manufacturers that use hydrogen as a chemical reactant, replacing conventionally produced hydrogen with green hydrogen offers a practical route to reduce emissions without redesigning established production routes.
A shift at industrial scale
The scale of this transition is significant. By replacing conventionally produced hydrogen with renewable hydrogen in a core production process, Wolfram is taking an important step towards lowering the carbon footprint of its tungsten powders while supporting its long-term ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The project also demonstrates how established industrial processes can be decarbonised without compromising product quality or operational performance.
“This isn’t about changing the chemistry of tungsten production,” says Bock. “It’s about changing the source of an input we have always needed. Hydrogen remains essential to our process, but producing it with renewable electricity generated by local wind farms gives us a clear route to lower-carbon manufacturing.”
That transition also depends on the wider energy system around Wolfram. Styria is investing in the renewable energy and hydrogen infrastructure needed to support industrial demand, with Energie Steiermark’s Masterplan Grüne Energie 2040 highlighting climate-neutral hydrogen as an important future requirement for the region’s manufacturers.
For Wolfram, the regional context matters because hydrogen supply depends on renewable electricity, infrastructure and industrial demand developing together.
Making green hydrogen industrially viable
Making the switch from grey to green hydrogen is not only a question of production chemistry. For an industrial user like Wolfram, green hydrogen also has to be available at the right scale, in the right location and with the reliability needed to support an established manufacturing process.
“We’re building this on a near-site production model: a PEM electrolysis plant about a kilometre from our site, connected by a direct underground pipeline,” Schwarzl explains. “This proximity matters because hydrogen is difficult to move efficiently by road at the scale that our tungsten production requires, and because green hydrogen depends on access to renewable electricity in sufficient quantity and quality.
“It also provides a more resilient supply model, reducing our dependence on longer transport routes and giving us direct access to a dedicated source of hydrogen located alongside our operations.”
The new facility will also include redundant electrolysis capacity, strengthening supply security for a production process in which hydrogen is an essential raw material. As the anchor customer of the facility, Wolfram will benefit from a long-term dedicated supply agreement and direct pipeline delivery from a nearby production source, helping to reduce exposure to transport, availability and infrastructure constraints. More importantly, the project demonstrates how renewable electricity, near-site hydrogen production, direct pipeline supply and industrial demand must develop together to make green hydrogen viable at scale.
The project also sits within a wider hydrogen infrastructure picture. Wolfram’s St. Martin site is located in Styria, within Austria’s Green Tech Valley, where regional planning is already addressing hydrogen’s future role in industrial decarbonisation.
As Energie Steiermark’s Masterplan Grüne Energie 2040 states, “the decarbonisation of industrial processes is leading to massively increasing electricity and hydrogen demand”. The same report projects that hydrogen demand from participating Styrian industrial companies could rise to as much as 5.6 TWh by 2040, while identifying the expansion of gas and electricity networks as a basic requirement for successful transformation.
This local planning connects to a wider European infrastructure picture. One of the most significant future developments is the SoutH2 Corridor, a planned 3,300 km hydrogen pipeline connecting North Africa, Italy, Austria and Germany, intended to supply renewable hydrogen to major industrial demand clusters in Central Europe. For Wolfram, the immediate project is local, but it sits within a broader shift towards hydrogen infrastructure designed around real industrial demand.
“A hydrogen network cannot be built in isolation from the industries that will use it,” says Bock. “Production capacity, infrastructure and industrial demand must develop together. For Wolfram, being part of a region investing in renewable energy and hydrogen infrastructure is important to making lower-carbon production viable.”
What doesn’t change for customers
For customers, Bock is clear that the headline benefit is straightforward. “One clear benefit for customers is the reduction in emissions associated with one of the inputs behind our core production processes,” he says.
But just as important is what stays the same. “The purity and quality requirements for hydrogen used in tungsten reduction are extremely high, so we’re keeping our own hydrogen recycling system in place, cleaning and reusing hydrogen to the same pressure and purity standards as before,” Bock says. Customers will see no difference in the tungsten metal or tungsten carbide powders they receive. The value is a lower-carbon production route behind the same high-quality material.
For other manufacturers weighing up decarbonisation, this is arguably the more useful takeaway than the hydrogen story itself. Progress does not always mean redesigning an established process. Sometimes it means changing how critical inputs are produced and supplied. For Wolfram, the transition to green hydrogen demonstrates how manufacturers can reduce emissions, strengthen supply resilience and take meaningful steps towards ambitious net-zero targets without compromising on quality or reliability.
