On the afternoon of December 14, China Baowu, Rio Tinto and Tsinghua University jointly held the 3rd China Steel Low Carbon Development Goals and Pathways Workshop to discuss the road to low carbon transformation in the steel industry.
Since production first exceeded 100 million tons in 1996, China has been the world’s top steel producing country for 26 consecutive years. China is the production center of the world’s steel industry and the consumption center of the world’s steel industry. In the face of China’s 30-60 double carbon target, the steel industry is also promoting green low carbon innovation, in which scientific planning, industrial synergy, technological innovation breakthroughs and energy efficiency improvement are all crucial.
How can the steel industry achieve peak carbon and carbon neutrality?
As an important basic industry of the national economy, the steel industry is also one of the key points and difficulties in promoting carbon emission reduction. Wang Hao, Deputy Director of the Carbon Summit and Carbon Neutral Promotion Division of the Department of Environmental Resources of the National Development and Reform Commission, pointed out at the meeting that the steel industry should not reach the peak for the sake of reaching the peak, let alone reducing productivity for the sake of emission reduction, but should take the carbon peak as an important opportunity to promote the green and low-carbon transformation and high-quality development of the steel industry.
Huang Guiding, deputy secretary general of China Iron and Steel Industry Association, said at the meeting that in order to promote green and low-carbon, China’s steel industry is actively promoting three major steel projects: capacity replacement, ultra-low emission and extreme energy efficiency. However, China’s resource and energy endowment of insufficient scrap steel, rich in coal and poor in oil and gas, determines that the status quo of China’s steel industry, which is dominated by the long process of blast furnaces and converters, will be maintained for quite a long time.
Huang said, in-depth promotion of energy-saving technology and process equipment innovation and transformation and upgrading, the whole process energy efficiency improvement, is the current priority of the steel industry to reduce carbon, but also the key to the recent low-carbon transformation and upgrading of China’s steel.
In August this year, the Steel Industry Low Carbon Work Promotion Committee officially released the “Carbon Neutral Vision and Low Carbon Technology Roadmap for the Steel Industry” (hereinafter referred to as “Roadmap”), which clarifies six technical paths for the low carbon transformation of China’s steel industry, namely system energy efficiency improvement, resource recycling, process optimization and innovation, smelting process breakthrough, product iteration and upgrading, and carbon capture and storage utilization.
The Roadmap divides the process of implementing the dual carbon transition in China’s steel industry into four stages, the first stage of which is to actively promote the steady achievement of carbon peaking by 2030, deep decarbonization from 2030 to 2040, sprinting for extreme carbon reduction from 2040 to 2050, and promoting carbon neutrality from 2050 to 2060.
Fan Tiejun, president of the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute, divided the development of China’s steel industry into two periods and five stages. The two periods are the quantity period and the high quality period, the quantity period is divided into the growth stage and the reduction stage, and the high quality period is divided into the accelerated restructuring stage, the strengthened environmental protection stage and the low carbon development stage. In his view, China’s steel industry is currently in the reduction phase, accelerating restructuring phase and strengthening the environmental protection phase of the three phases overlapping period.
Fan Tiejun said that, according to the Metallurgical Planning and Research Institute’s understanding and research, China’s steel industry has already left the stage of vague concepts and empty slogans, and most enterprises have begun to implement the double carbon action initiatives into the key work of steel enterprises. A number of domestic steel mills have already started to try hydrogen metallurgy, CCUS projects and green power projects.
Scrap steel utilization and hydrogen metallurgy are important directions
Industry insiders point out that in the process of low-carbon transformation of the steel industry, the utilization of scrap steel resources and the development of hydrogen metallurgy technology will be one of the two key directions for the breakthrough of carbon reduction in the industry.
Xiao Guodong, assistant general manager of China Baowu Group and chief representative of Carbon Neutral, pointed out at the meeting that steel is a recyclable green material and the steel industry has been an important foundation to support the development of the modern world. Global scrap steel resources are not enough to meet the needs of social development, and the production of steel starting from ore will remain the mainstream for quite a long period of time in the future.
Xiao said that the development of green low-carbon steel and iron products production is not only determined by the current resource and energy conditions, but also to lay the foundation for future generations to be able to have more steel recycling materials. To achieve the double carbon goal of the steel industry, the adjustment of energy structure is very crucial, among which hydrogen energy will play an important role.
Mr. Huang, Deputy Secretary General of China Steel Association, pointed out that hydrogen metallurgy can make up for the disadvantage of relatively insufficient scrap resources in developing countries, especially in countries like China, while hydrogen direct iron reduction can be an important option for diversifying and enriching iron resources in short flow processes.
In a previous interview with 21st Century Business Herald, Yanlin Zhao, co-head of China research at Bank of America Securities, said that steel is the industry with the highest carbon emissions except thermal power, and hydrogen, as a convertible energy source, has a greater possibility to replace coking coal and coke in the future. If the project of hydrogen instead of coal can be successfully and widely applied in the production of steel mills, it will bring a big breakthrough and a good development opportunity for the low-carbon transformation of the steel industry.
According to Fan Tiejun, the carbon peak in the steel industry is a development issue, and to achieve sustainable and scientific carbon peak in the steel industry, the first thing to solve is the structural adjustment in the development; while in the carbon reduction stage, the advanced technology should be used systematically, and the decarbonization stage must have the emergence of revolutionary technology, including hydrogen metallurgy, and the large-scale application of electric furnace process steelmaking; in the carbon neutral stage of the steel industry, it is necessary to The carbon neutral stage of the steel industry should emphasize cross-regional and multi-disciplinary synergy, combining traditional process innovation, CCUS and the application of forest carbon sinks.
Fan Tiejun suggested that the low-carbon transformation of the steel industry should be combined with development planning, the requirements of the upstream and downstream industry chains, urban development, and technological innovation, and that since the steel industry will soon be included in the carbon market, the industry should also combine the carbon market to promote energy conservation and emission reduction from a market-oriented perspective.
Post time: Dec-28-2022