Decarbonisation determinants of the steel industry

The iron and steel industry is a sector with very high energy consumption and also causing high emissions. It is difficult to imagine the development of modern sectors of the economy such as construction, transport or the machinery industry without the use of steel, so forecasts indicate that the demand for steel will increase in the future. Meanwhile, environmental concerns and concerns about climate change are growing, so the iron and steel industry faces a serious challenge related to reducing its emissions in order to achieve the goal set in the Paris Agreement, and this is even more true for this industry in the European Union. Currently, the most popular technology for steel production is the blast furnace process – basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF). This technology requires the use of coal, which is a source of emissions, so a radical technological change is needed. Decarbonising the steel industry requires changing from coal-based metallurgy to hydrogen-based and electricity-based metallurgy. Changing from primary to secondary steel production (using scrap steel) improves the situation but is not a solution to meet growing demand. There are two main technology paths that can achieve significant CO2 reduction. The first is Smart Carbon Usage (SCU), which is based on the gradual reduction of coal consumption, including the use of by-product gases for further conversion into valuable products. The second emerging technology path is Carbon Direct Avoidance (CDA). These and other developing methods of low-emission or zero-emission metallurgy are discussed in the article. Unfortunately, some of these methods are not mature and their final commercialisation requires overcoming a number of problems.