The report discusses current steel production and decarbonisation efforts, the potential of closing the loop in shipping, and identifies a number of drivers and barriers to achieving greater circularity for the maritime sector. Among others, the need for greater traceability across the ship lifecycle, as well as increasing regulation around sustainability and emissions reporting, are discussed.

Agora's study in the global steel sector proposes a transformative shift towards sustainability, aiming for a net-zero iron and steel sector by the early 2040s. The key strategies involve material efficiency, advancements in hydrogen-based steelmaking, and green iron trade. Agora emphasizes international collaboration, urging governments to create regulatory frameworks for accelerated steel transformation. The study highlights the cost-effectiveness of transporting embodied hydrogen as green iron, offering economic benefits for both exporters and importers. In challenging traditional views on carbon capture and storage, Agora advocates for swift action to avoid carbon lock-in and stranded assets.

This document seeks to provide steel producers, steel purchasers, and organisations working on steel decarbonisation in Japan with the information to challenge some of the most common arguments against decarbonisation of the steel industry in the country. It aims to explain how and why steel decarbonisation, aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, is both possible and necessary in Japan.

This report generated from CDP disclosures from April 2022 to July 2022 attempts to look at the trends of steel companies based on voluntary information provided. It looks at climate change risk and opportunities identified by these companies, cost of response to risk and action, emissions, and energy profiles. The report also gives a brief overview of the global scenario with insights into disclosure of global steel companies to enable a comparative idea.

Scrap steel and iron play a major role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting industries in the world – the steel industry. How can the availability of scrap be secured in the future? What incentives are needed to promote circularity in the steel sector? As part of the World Circular Economy Forum, this Accelerator Session gathered steel industry experts who analysed the opportunities and challenges related to increasing the use of scrap in steel production.

Friends of the Earth Finland has created a scoreboard evaluating prominent steel purchasers in Finland, which includes globally recognized entities like Metso and KONE. Given the substantial emissions associated with steel production, these companies' procurement practices wield significant influence over planetary burdens. Friends of the Earth Finland scrutinizes the foremost steel consumers in Finland for their supply chain's environmental and climate effects. While these companies exhibit sustainability policies, the scoreboard questions the depth and efficacy of these strategies, encouraging a potential upscaling of efforts. The scoreboard's outcomes undergo annual updates, ensuring a dynamic and informed assessment.

A new report by Greenpeace East Asia reveals that carmakers are endangering the planet by failing to decarbonize their steel supply chains, pushing global temperatures beyond the critical 1.5°C threshold. Steel production for the automotive industry is responsible for a staggering 573 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year, equivalent to Australia's annual emissions. Greenpeace urges major automakers like Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Toyota to disclose their steel emissions and take action to consume less steel and transition to zero-carbon steelmaking. Despite using at least 39 million tonnes of steel in 2022, automakers have not set specific targets to reduce steel consumption or disclosed emissions associated with steel. While some low-carbon steel initiatives exist in Europe, East Asia lacks comparable partnerships. Greenpeace emphasizes the need for automakers to halve their steel emissions by 2030, disclose steel-related emissions, issue green steel procurement commitments, and ultimately achieve net-zero emissions across their supply chains.

POSCO, South Korea's leading steelmaker, has announced plans to double its sales of "eco-friendly" steel by 2030 as part of its new vision to become a "green energy and global business pioneer." This move comes as major steel users, including Maersk, Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW, Volvo Cars, and Apple, have each declared that green steel will be a crucial part of their future manufacturing plans. However, POSCO's carbon neutrality roadmap is incomplete, and estimates suggest that the company's emissions intensity will only be reduced by 12.4% by 2030, well behind the recommended reduction of 29%. The EU's new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) could increase the cost of South Korea's high-emission steel exports by 299 billion won by 2026, making further domestic action imperative. The South Korean government has a crucial role to play in facilitating a timely industrial transition that will safeguard both major and minor players in the steel industry.

The Carbon Voyage Tool is a web-based application developed by Global Efficiency Intelligence that quantifies the embodied carbon in traded products. Embodied emissions refer to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated from all upstream processes required to deliver a certain product or service. The tool offers a macro-analysis of embodied carbon in trade for specific countries/regions and key carbon-intensive products such as steel, cement, clinker, and aluminum over time up to 2019. It is built on an Environmentally-Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE MRIO) model that measures the portion of global CO2 emissions transferred through global trade. It offers crucial data on embodied carbon in international trade and global carbon emissions.

Governments in India, Japan, and South Korea hold significant purchasing power through public procurement, this power can be harnessed to promote the development of low-carbon steel products for construction projects. This report by the Global Efficiency Intelligence (GEI) focuses on Green Public Procurement (GPP) for steel in these countries, as major steel-producing nations with high CO2 emissions intensity in their steel industries. Click to view the full report.

These are the key barriers to establishing GPP policies, including inconsistent emissions reporting standards, an ambitious yet attainable approach to target setting, and decentralised procurement systems; as well as several recommendations to policy makers.

Green Public Procurement (GPP) could play a crucial role in decarbonising India's steel industry. Steel consumption in India is expected to increase fourfold by 2050. A significant amount of this demand is expected to come from government projects, and GPP policies would ensure these projects use low-carbon steel, and help create a wider market for such products.

Japan is a global leader in steel production. But it faces challenges in reducing CO2 emissions from the steel industry - a vital step in meeting global climate targets. The country’s well-established GPP programmes could have the potential to drive steel decarbonisation, stimulating wider demand for low-carbon products.

With a significant steel industry and growing steel consumption, South Korea has been grappling with the need to decarbonise its steel production. In their latest briefing, Global Efficiency Intelligence explores the role of GPP in driving down emissions in South Korea’s steel industry, and the opportunities and challenges to implementing such policies.

Current methods of green steel labeling are confusing due to a lack of standardization and complexity in environmental impact assessments. How should labeling be developed to ensure sufficient emission reductions, customer trust and fair competition?

The G-7 summit in Japan presents a unique opportunity for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to position Japan as a leader in the green steel market. The steel industry is becoming a core element of the world's trade and sustainability transformation, but its emissions remain a significant contributor to global carbon emissions. Kishida can use his influence as host to shape a collaborative agreement on steel decarbonization and ensure that the world's biggest steel markets make clear commitments to green steel production. With its innovative manufacturing capacity, Japan can play a vital global role in achieving the emissions reductions necessary to meet targets set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. However, for Japan to remain at the leading edge of industrial innovation and at the center of a market-driven transition toward green steel, it must rapidly expand and integrate renewables and electric arc furnaces across its steel industry.

The implementation phase for achieving a net zero steel industry will require robust methodologies for measuring emissions at the site- and product-level, together with data collection frameworks to facilitate comparison and track progress. An existing array of methodologies and frameworks for the steel industry provide a good starting point for efforts to achieve these outcomes, but much work remains to achieve interoperability, transparency and fitness for purpose for net zero. Following an evaluation of these existing methodologies and frameworks, this report provides “net zero principles” to guide potential next steps for their development and implementation, together with specific policy recommendations for G7 members. In the context of Japan’s G7 Presidency, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry requested the International Energy Agency (IEA) to examine the topic of Emissions Measurement and Data Collection for a Net Zero Steel Industry. This work complements that undertaken during Germany’s G7 Presidency in 2022 – Achieving Net Zero Heavy Industry Sectors in G7 Members – providing insights and direction for the G7 Industrial Decarbonisation Agenda with regard to tackling industrial emissions.

The goal of this study is to develop a roadmap for deep decarbonization of the Chinese steel industry. It analyzed the current status of the Chinese steel industry and developed scenarios for 2050 to assess different decarbonization pathways that can substantially reduce the CO2 emissions of the steel industry in China. It included five major decarbonization pillars in our analysis: 1) demand reduction, 2) energy efficiency, 3) fuel switching, electrification, and grid decarbonization, 4) technology shift to low-carbon steelmaking, 5) carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).

A rapid scale-up in near-zero emissions primary steelmaking is critical for decarbonising steel. Growing demand for steel and inherent limits to the future supply of scrap steel available for recycling means that as much as 60% of global demand in 2050 may still need to be met by primary (ore-based) steel production. Decarbonising primary production represents an essential lever for achieving a net-zero emissions steel sector. Expanding the pipeline of commercial-scale, near-zero emissions primary projects and progressing them to final investment decisions (FIDs) in the next five years becomes the critical task for putting the global industry on a 1.5°C-aligned pathway. In the United Kingdom, effective carbon pricing on domestic production and steel imports, lower costs associated with sourcing and processing scrap steel, a market for differentiated low-carbon steel and guarantees to de-risk novel technologies could establish an investment case.

Steel making accounts for about 8% of all global emissions, and that's rising quickly as urbanisation accelerates around the world. So we need to decarbonise the steelmaking process now! This video shows a great new solution for how to achieve that goal.