One of Europe’s dirtiest industries has ambitious plans to go green
The fireworks will be gone—but the climate will be grateful. Conventional steelmaking emits carbon dioxide twice over: first to generate the intense heat needed to force the coke to react with the ore in the blast furnace; then in the chemical reaction itself, as the coke snatches oxygen atoms from the ore to form iron and COas a by-product. As a result, steelmakers account for between 7% and 9% of annual global carbon emissions, about as much as India and not much less than road transport.
More handouts may be on the way. On May 5th Germany’s economy ministry announced plans to subsidise 80% of the electricity cost for energy-intensive firms, a group that includes steelmakers, if they pledge to go net-zero by 2045. Think-tanks like Agora Industrie suggest favouring green steel in public procurement. Ideas such as “carbon contracts” to pay firms the difference between what it costs to make grey steel and the green sort are making the rounds in European capitals.
Though nothing to sneeze at, this is far less than the 190m tonnes a year needed by 2030 for Europe’s steel industry to be on track for net-zero emissions by mid-century, according to the—and a drop in the bucket next to the nearly 2bn tonnes produced each year around the world. What is more, so far only three companies on the’s roster have moved from the talking phase to actual investment: H2 Green Steel, Salzgitter and ArcelorMittal, which is erecting a green-steel mill in Canada.
Meeting the energy, resource and labour needs will be no less daunting. Direct reduction with hydrogen consumes 15 times more electricity than coking, according to one estimate. At full capacity, H2 Green Steel’s and Hybrit’s plants in Sweden will between them need nearly as much power as the entire country generates today. They also need purer iron ore, because it does not melt fully in hydrogen-powered furnaces, making it more difficult to skim off contaminants.
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