Part 1: Greening Steelmaking: All Round Progress and Adoption Made so Far - Technology and Progress

Around 75% of steel is still largely made in coal-fired blast furnaces, which pump large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A significant proportion of global steel production is currently based on the conventional Blast Furnace-Basic Oxygen Furnace (BF-BOF) which contributed 3 Gt of CO2 emissions in 2019. Under real process conditions, depending on furnace and feedstock, the carbon requirement is in the best practice cases today around 400-450 kg per metric tonne of pig iron. The global average is about 500 kg per tonne of pig iron. Hydrogen as a low-carbon clean energy source is experiencing a global resurgence and has been recognized as an alternative energy carrier that can help bring the world to a carbon neutral future. However, getting to scale is one of the main challenges limiting the growth of the hydrogen economy. In particular, the high cost of transporting green hydrogen is bottlenecking the international trading and wider adoption of hydrogen for global carbon natural objectives. In order to explore incentives for the global hydrogen economy and develop new pathways towards the carbon neutral future, the concept of hydrogen credit is proposed and a framework of trading hydrogen credits similar to carbon credits in the international market is established.