The Steel Industry Is Cleaning Up Its Act

Companies and organizations worldwide are joining forces to clean up the steelmaking industry, with serious efforts to develop and adopt greener alternatives to producing the currently highly polluting product.

“We are seeing a great shift happening in the steel industry,” says Anne-Claire Howard, CEO of ResponsibleSteel, an Australian nonprofit whose goal is to bring together players in the steel supply chain that otherwise might not talk to each other, including ore miners, foundry owners and automakers.

Between 7% and 8% of all carbon dioxide emissions come from steel production. In Sweden, H2 Green Steel has developed a cleaner method to extract iron from iron ore. If the challenges are big to decarbonize the industry, progress is already tangible. Alternatives to coal-fired production are growing in numbers, such as electrolysis-made hydrogen fuel known as “green steel” to minimize carbon dioxide emissions from the production process. Members of the buyers’ consortium SteelZero have pledged to use a minimum of 50% of net-zero steel by 2030, and 100% by 2050.