CALL TO ADOPT CLEANER PRODUCTION FOR STEEL
Modest adjustments to plans on use of electric arc furnaces would cut more emissions and significantly reduce China’s carbon footprint, report says
China’s steel sector is likely to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than a tenth from current levels by next year if the country gets more ambitious about adopting cleaner production technology, according to US think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The emission reduction, roughly the same as taking 47 million petrol-powered passenger vehicles off the road, would be possible if Beijing were to set a more ambitious target for the use of electric arc furnaces (EAFs) and accelerate its shift away from the coal-based process, known as blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF), the organisation said in a report published yesterday.
Pushing EAFs to 20 per cent of total production next year, rather than the current target of 15 per cent, could reduce the sector’s emissions by 11 per cent, compared with 8.7 per cent for the lower target, GEM estimated.
“Given its outsize impact on carbon emissions, even incremental changes to the steel industry could significantly reduce China’s carbon footprint,” said Jessie Zhi, a researcher at GEM and one of the report’s authors.
As of January, China had 1,064 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of steelmaking capacity, 86 per cent based on BF-BOF and 14 per cent using EAF, GEM’s data showed. That puts China just one percentage point away from the 2025 EAF target of 15 per cent, set by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020.
While the 15 per cent target would reduce emissions by 179 Mtpa, raising the goal to 20 per cent would eliminate 217 Mtpa, or 21 per cent more emissions, according to Zhi.
The report comes as China, the world’s largest steel producer, continues to invest in new coalbased iron and steel capacity despite overcapacity, low profitability among steel firms and Beijing’s dual decarbonisation goals of peaking national emissions by the end of this decade and reaching net-zero by 2060.
The steel industry is China’s second-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide after the power industry, accounting for 15 to 20 per cent of the country’s overall emissions.
The sector has long relied on the coal-based BF-BOF process, which emits about 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of steel produced, compared with about 1.3 tonnes with EAFs, according to GEM.
In a draft plan released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020, Beijing originally called for EAFs to account for 15 to 20 per cent of steel production by 2025, but it removed the mention of the 20 per cent level from the guidance issued in 2022.
China may aim to increase the share of EAFs to more than 20 per cent by 2030, according to a proposal introduced this month by seven government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environmental Protection.
“If China made modest adjustments to its current capacity development and closure plans to add more EAF capacity and less BF-BOF capacity, or retire more BF-BOF capacity and less EAF capacity, the country could install enough EAF capacity to make its initial ambition of reaching 20 per cent EAF production by 2025 possible, provided utilisation rates are raised,” said Caitlin Swalec, GEM’s programme director of heavy industry and one of the authors of the report.
This would require China to add around 39 Mtpa of new EAF capacity by 2025, GEM said.