The lack of industry agreement on the definition of low-carbon, or green steel, and the many challenges to achieve a globally recognised sustainable steel are impacting the ferrous recycling industry, Kallanish learns.
These challenges include emissions certification and standards, trade policies, energy costs and unwillingness to use recycled steel, noted panellists during the BIR Ferrous Division at the recent World Recycling Convention at Singapore.
Sustainability was a challenging and complex area for recyclers, Patrick Davison, director of sustainability at European Metal Recycling told delegates.
“Can blast furnaces be green?” he asked, “They are claiming to have high volume material, high quality materials but actually we have a significant environmental footprint associated with the manufacture of materials from there.”
He called for collaboration within the recycling industry so that the challenges are jointly understood, and that “we are very clear and consistent about what we think green steel is.”
Without common regulations globally, it was going to be hard to drive reductions in the carbon footprint of steel production and make more sustainable steel, George Adams, ceo of SA Recycling said.
He noted it was “easier for mills to run iron ore pellets” than recycled steel in US and “they’re not as focused on their carbon footprint as they are on their bonuses”.
But he stressed that recycling remains crucial. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s aluminium or steel or copper, nothing reduces carbon more than recycling. The EU is much more ahead of the US on [regulation] because, at the end of the day, customers are still looking at the cost.”
However, Emmanuel Katrakis, Director of Public and Regulatory Affairs at Galloo noted that 70% of US production is via EAF and recycled steel.
He added that the EU was facing an energy crisis because of the war in Ukraine which has decoupled energy prices from the rest of the world. At the same time, the US had implemented its Inflation Reduction legislation, and “Big players in Europe invested in decarbonisation, not in Europe but in the US because of that financial stimulus.”
In an earlier presentation Adina Renee Adler, executive director of Global Steel Climate Council told delegates that data on emissions should be collected throughout the supply chain of steel production.
However, Adams pushed back on this, saying that scrap should simply be counted as having zero emissions. He cautioned that some scrap will not get recycled in instances where being situated too far away would incur too large a carbon footprint.
Additionally, he was concerned gathering such data would be “too challenging” for the smaller scrap collectors.
Shane Mellor, managing director, at Mellor Metals and BIR Ferrous Division President agreed, adding “a product comes to the end of its life when it enters the recycling facility. You’re at zero at that point.”
Anna Low Singapore
