BIR Singapore 2024 - Ferrous Division: “Green steel” in need of wider recognition and global promotion

Achieving globally recognised sustainable steel faces many challenges, including emissions certification and standards, trade policies, energy costs and some mills’ reticence to use recycled steel, BIR’s World Recycling Convention in Singapore has heard.

The Ferrous Division session on 29 October was devoted to what is generally referred to as “green steel” – low carbon products typically made with recycled steel using renewable energy sources. But it was clear from the discussion there is no clear industrywide agreement on what counts as “green” and no clear path to reaching one.

In her presentation, guest speaker Adina Renee Adler, Executive Director of the Global Steel Climate Council (GSCC) (USA), said she didn’t use the term “green steel” because it was such an ill-defined concept. For her, sustainability was about standards and targets while a key measure was the emissions intensity of steel products. GSCC was formed in 2022 to create a standard for measuring and reporting on emissions. Ms Adler noted that demand for standards was being driven by climate agreements, policies such as the European Green Deal, and pressure from customers, consumers and investors.

Patrick Davison, Director of Sustainability at EMR (GBR), said sustainability was a challenging and complex area. 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.”

Mr Davison’s presentation focussed on vehicles – as suppliers of materials to recyclers at end-of-life (ELV) and potential recipients of recyclers’ secondary products. He noted that around a third of ELVs in Europe are lost from the wider European market but EMR wants to hold on to that material to process it further.

Inconsistent regulation

“If we have a larger volume of material, we can spread our investment costs, our R and D costs, around further processing to increase the quality of the materials that we've got. Maybe we will start selling these materials on the basis of a melt package, so we can actually set the chemistry of the materials …so it's a very specific product quality that we're achieving in that process. We're already working with automotive [OEMs] in relation to the design of their vehicles, ready for recycling.”

While many bemoaned regulations, Mr Davison said his main concern was an inconsistent enforcement of legislation. “We need to get reasonably comfortable with a little bit of self-policing. What I'm talking about is collaborating so we understand what the challenges are, and as a sector, we are very clear and consistent about what we think green steel is.”

 Divisional President Shane Mellor, Managing Director of Mellor Metals (GBR), opened the Q&A section by wondering why the importance of recycled steel in making steel products more sustainable was not being sufficiently recognised.

In response, George Adams, CEO and President of SA Recycling (USA), said that without common regulations across the world it was going to be hard to drive reductions in the carbon footprint of steel production. In the US, he said it was “easier for mills to run iron ore pellets” than recycled steel and “they're not as focused on their carbon footprint as they are on their bonuses”. But he was adamant that recycling was 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.”

Zero-emission scrap

Panellist Emmanuel Katrakis, Director of Public and Regulatory Affairs at Galloo (FRA/BEL), thought the US was actually ahead of the EU because 70% of steel was produced in its electric arc furnaces using recycled steel. A major problem in the EU was the energy crisis because of the war in Ukraine, decoupling energy prices in Europe from the rest of the world, Mr Katrakis said. At the same time, the US had implemented its Inflation Reduction legislation. “Big players in Europe invested in decarbonisation, not in Europe but in the US because of that financial stimulus.” On the question of standards, he asked: “Why are there so many standards? Which standard do you go with?”

 In her presentation, Ms Adler had argued that data on emissions should be collected throughout the supply chain but Mr Adams pushed back by saying scrap should simply be counted as having zero emissions. “Some scrap won't get recycled - stuff that's too far away. You'll say: ‘Oh, that's too big a carbon footprint’.” He was also concerned such data reporting would be too much for smaller traders.

Mr Mellor agreed with the argument: “A product comes to the end of its life when it enters the recycling facility. You're at zero at that point.”

Ms Adler replied the demand for such data was coming from customers and investors. “You don't need to exactly account 100% for every molecule but they're asking for more and more and trying to increase the percentage that you can get from this primary data.”