Posted on 15 Sep 2023
The world is "short of stuff" and this will constrain industry players’ responses to the call of decarbonising the steel industry, James Stevenson, executive director and research lead at McCloskey, said at the Eurocoke conference in Amsterdam this week. Crucially, these shortages include high-grade iron ore, scrap and hydrogen, Kallanish notes.
This means the uptake of greener steelmaking technologies will be constrained, and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) will be an important part of decarbonisation for decades to come. Among the top 27 steel producing countries, around half of steel production will still be through the blast furnace-oxygen converter route by 2050. However, around 25% of this will feed CCUS to reduce carbon emissions, according to McCloskey forecasts.
China will be a key driver of CCUS, McCloskey believes. This is not only because it has a vast fleet of blast furnaces that cannot be rapidly replaced. It is also still reliant on coal-fired power plants which will require CCUS. It also wants to be the developer and owner of CCUS technologies as tech ownership and exports is a strategic economic goal for the country.
Scrap-based electric arc furnace production should account for around one third of total steelmaking at the 27 top producers, Stevenson added. The further development of this segment is constrained by scrap availability, as well as high EAF costs in China and elsewhere. The carbon emissions per tonne of steel from this sector will meanwhile decline as global electricity networks also decarbonise.
Hydrogen-direct reduced iron steelmaking could increase rapidly, but by 2050 would account for just 14% of steelmaking in these top 27 producers, McCloskey notes. This technology will begin to spread across all major regions going forward.
Source:Kallanish
