![]() ![]() Also, H2 Green Steel is a startup raising money to build a plant in Sweden that it says will produce steel with 95 percent fewer emissions than typical practices. SSAB is part of a joint venture in Sweden that has a plant operating at a small scale and aims to have a plant operating on a commercial scale in the next few years. In 2021, the company announced investments in its Hamilton, Ontario, plant that would reduce emissions by 60 percent, mainly by switching to electric arc furnaces.īut to find examples of steel plants with current plans to get to zero emissions, or close to it, you need to look to Europe. The company has a corporate target of getting to net-zero emissions by 2050. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the second-largest steel producer in the world, could be a key player. (Note that Volvo Group is a maker of industrial vehicles and buses, while Volvo Cars has been a separate company for several decades.) Volvo is working with SSAB, a global steelmaker that is based in Sweden. The United States is going to need to find ways to create connections between steelmakers who want to make a low-emissions product with the customers who want to buy it.Ī good example is what Volvo Group did in Sweden. As ICN reported last year in the “Pipe Dreams” series, carbon capture brings some big technical and financial challenges. The amount of the credit would depend on the effectiveness of the capture system. Hydrogen made from gas would qualify for the tax credit, but only if the process was backed up by carbon capture technology. Some companies may use gas-derived hydrogen, especially if they don’t have reliable options for obtaining hydrogen made from renewable energy. To get the full $3, a company would need to have emissions that are close to zero.Īt the same time, the natural gas industry would like to be a big part of the hydrogen economy, since natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen. The cleanliness of hydrogen production is an important consideration for companies because the tax credit has a sliding scale. The cleanest way to produce hydrogen is to use renewable energy to power electrolyzers, which split water into hydrogen and oxygen. One of the challenges of setting up a clean steel plant is figuring out the logistics of obtaining a reliable supply of hydrogen. The credit-which is up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen-is a major incentive that reduces the risks of opening a plant that makes low-emissions steel, Terry said. To help make that happen, the Inflation Reduction Act includes a tax credit for production of hydrogen. The Biden administration would like to see steel production come back to the United States, including primary steel, at the same time that the industry adopts cleaner practices. This is called “secondary steel,” and it has much lower emissions than “primary steel,” which is usually made in a process of superheating iron ore with coal or natural gas. steel industry is much smaller than it used be, largely due to competition from low-cost options in China and other countries.Ībout 70 percent of the steel produced in the United States is made mostly with recycled scrap in electric arc furnaces. The majority of those emissions are in China, which is the global leader in steel, while the U.S. Steel production accounts for 11 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the research firm Global Efficiency Intelligence. This is in contrast with methods that use coal or natural gas, and are major polluters. What is low-emissions steel? It can mean a few things, but we are mainly talking about making steel in processes that do not burn fossil fuels, often by using hydrogen. companies can seize this moment in the global energy transition to become major suppliers of low-emissions steel. ![]() She is co-author of a new report arguing that U.S. ![]()
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