Liberty Steel, headed by commodities tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, plans to build a hydrogen-powered steel plant in France to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it said on Monday.

Privately owned Liberty Steel aims to use hydrogen to produce 2 million tonnes of low-carbon feedstock for its steel plants elsewhere in France, the Czech Republic and Romania.

Liberty, part of the GFG Alliance conglomerate owned by the Gupta family, said the initiative is part of the group's pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030.

It plans to build a direct-reduced iron plant and a 1 gigawatt hydrogen electrolysis unit next to the GFG Alliance's aluminum plant in Dunkirk, but no time frame was given.

Liberty Steel said it had signed a memorandum of understanding for the project with Luxembourg-based engineering company Paul Wurth S.A. and German steelmaker SHS-Stahl-Holding-Saar GmbH & Co KGaA.

Those two partners last week agreed with global miner Rio Tinto to explore potential production of a low-carbon steel feedstock in Canada.