LIBERTY Steel Spotlights Long-Term Trends that Impact Steel Industry

The steelmakers will be forced to decarbonise their operations and transform to GREENSTEEL technologies at the earliest.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): LIBERTY Steel has highlighted the long-term trends affecting steel and its approach to transition towards green steelmaking.

Sandip Biswas, Group Chief Investment Officer, GFG Alliance noted that the company continues to maintain positive view on the long-term prospects of global steel industry. The projected population growth in the developing world will drive demand for steel. The demand is expected to almost double by 2050.

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The steelmakers will be forced to decarbonise their operations and transform to GREENSTEEL technologies at the earliest, partly due to increasing regulatory pressure. For instance, several countries have already enacted legislations targeting carbon neutral goal by 2050. It must be noted that, steel accounts for approximately 8-9% of the global carbon dioxide emissions.

The conventional primary steel production process uses a combination of coal and iron ore which results in high carbon emissions. The transition to green steelmaking is a two-step process. In the first step, there must be a transition to DRI furnaces that uses natural gas as the reducing agent for iron ore and processing of DRI in EAFs with scrap. In the next step, green hydrogen must be increasingly used as the reduction agent for iron ore.