‘Carbon capture to have a limited impact on steel decarbonization’

According to a new report from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technology will not play a major role in steel decarbonization.

Direct reduced iron (DRI)-based steelmaking, which can run on green hydrogen, is gaining momentum in the steel sector. IEEFA’s research found that this technology – along with electric arc furnaces (EAFs) powered by renewable electricity – offers steelmakers a far more promising pathway to reduce their emissions than CCUS. Despite this, many major steelmakers worldwide still maintain that CCUS will contribute to the decarbonization of their operations.

Simon Nicholas, IEEFA’s Lead Steel Financial Analyst, says: 'CCUS technology has been around for nearly 50 years and has accumulated a history of significant underperformance.'

CCUS is susceptible to significant financial, technological, and environmental risks, made worse by uncertainty over the long-term effectiveness of geological CO2 storage. The cost of carbon capture implementation has hardly been reduced in decades, while the cost of renewable energy and battery storage has plummeted. Furthermore, existing CCUS projects in the steel industry seem to be facing challenges.

‘Capture rates at the world’s only commercial-scale CCUS plant for gas-based steel production are very low. There are no commercial-scale CCUS plants for coal-based steelmaking anywhere in the world, with almost nothing in the pipeline’, say the authors of the study.

More information in the full article >

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In the picture, a carbon capture and storage facility in Canada. Source: Flickr