Speaking at a Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) conference attended by Kallanish in Abu Dhabi this week, Davide said steel demand and production would slowly increase until 2050. Demands for low-carbon steel mean steel mills hope to reduce carbon emissions by 70-90%.
The switch towards electric arc furnaces (EAFs) would double their share of production by 2050 and include a significant increase in direct reduced iron (DRI) production of 245 million tonnes/year, he adds.
More than an extra 300 million tonnes/year of scrap would be needed to feed the additional EAF production in the transition to green steel, BIR also reported.
From Davide’s speech, the company expects to see 18% of of global steel production from DRI EAF, 38% from scrap EAF and 44% from BOF. This implies steady increases for DRI EAF and scrap EAF scrap from 8% and 23% in 2020. Production from BOF will shrink by 26 percentage points by 2050 from 70% in 2020. Global steel production will be in the range of 2-2.5 billion tonnes/year by 2050, the data shows.
Global scrap availability should reach over 1.2 billion tonnes/year by 2050, with the biggest increase coming from obsolete scrap, which shows the rising importance of the control of scrap sourcing, processing and utilisation.
