Global Steel Coalition Urges G7 Leaders to Incentivize Low-Carbon Steel

The Global Steel Climate Council (GSCC) today urged the Group of Seven (G7) leaders to urge the transition to climate-sustaining steel products by incentivizing steelmakers around the world to use lower-emitting steel production processes and technologies.

GSCC has published The Steel Climate Standard to advance a consensus toward a global standard to significantly reduce carbon emissions in the steel industry. The science-based GSCC Standard is a comprehensive process-agnostic decarbonization framework to lower overall steel-related GHG emissions by 2050.

The Steel Climate Standard would provide a single, technology-agnostic framework for steel product certification and company science-based emissions target-setting that applies to all steel producers equally on a global basis; allow all steel customers to know the carbon emissions associated with the steel products they are purchasing and create an industry standard for achieving the emissions reduction goals in the Paris Climate Agreement by 2050.

Other organizations are advocating for a standard that features a “ferrous scrap sliding scale” that would set two disparate standards for emissions from steel producers – one standard for steel made from iron ore extractive production processes, and another for steel made from circular electric arc furnace (EAF) processes. A sliding scale would allow a steel product with five times higher embodied carbon to be labeled as green as the same one with five times less embodied carbon and much higher recycled content. GSCC believes this dual method would be unlikely to achieve the 1.5-degree °C objective by 2050.

Steel is an essential engineering material for the global economy and will play a central role in the transition to a decarbonized global economy as a vital input in many clean tech products. GSCC members are committed to engaging with the G7 governments and other institutions to advance a common standard for the global steel industry.

Source and Photo: Global Steel Climate Council