New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Hard road ahead for green steel production
27/9/2023
8 min read
Feature
Decarbonisation is one of the biggest challenges for the hard-to-abate iron and steel sector. New Energy World Features Editor Brian Davis looks at some of the front-runners in the race to produce green steel.
Steelmaking is a critical part of the global economy, but production is very emissions intensive, accounting for about 7% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. However, there are a variety of options for reducing emissions – from recycling scrap to decarbonising primary iron-ore-based steel.
The key decarbonisation route uses purportedly low-carbon ‘blue’ hydrogen (mostly from natural gas) or ideally carbon-less ‘green’ hydrogen (using renewable sources of electricity and water in electrolysers) to produce ‘direct reduced iron’ (DRI).
According to a report by the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) on Breakthrough Steel Investment, ‘a pipeline of over 60mn t/y of commercial-scale green steel capacity is planned to become operational by 2030’. Unfortunately, this figure falls well short of the 190mn t/y of ‘near-zero’ production capacity emissions required to keep the steel industry aligned with the 1.5°C pathway to net zero under the Paris Agreement.