Price of steel comes at a cost to the planet... we need to change

IT’S AN industry that has provided a purpose for communities across the North for centuries – but producing steel comes at a cost to the environment.

The methods used are described as “carbon hungry”, with large quantities of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere due to the chemistry at the heart of the process.

And as IPPR North’s report outlines, it will take new methods and fresh approaches to reduce harmful emissions.

The main steel production methods in the UK are the blast furnace basic-oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) and electric-arc furnace (EAF).

BF-BOF production used at the UK’s two major steel plants – Port Talbot and Scunthorpe – utilises oxygen to charge blast-furnace iron and scrap into steel.

Coke, which comes from coal, is used as a reducing agent in the blast furnace and carbon dioxide is produced as a waste product.

The more modern EAF technology is already low-carbon, using high-current electric arcs to melt steel scrap and convert it into liquid steel.

Because EAFs produce steel from high-quality scrap, they can achieve high levels of resource efficiency and re-use.

In the North, EAFs are currently in use at Liberty Steel in Rotherham, Sheffield Forgemaster and Outokumpu in Sheffield.

But this method is not without its drawbacks and there are concerns about the cost of energy for industry compared to international competitors, as well as on employment, with fears that using more EAFs will result in less direct employment.

The two main technological alternatives for reducing the carbon footprint of steel are hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

With the former, the hope is that hydrogen could be used to reduce iron, with water vapour produced in place of CO2.

But with hydrogen still in its early stages as a viable technology, its adoption will depend on the development of wider infrastructure to reduce costs.