“Five enablers: way forward to sustainable cleaner steel”

Right and scalable technology, appropriate policy guidance by government, access to finance to fund transition, willingness of customers to pay for cleaner products and infrastructure for use of new technologies are the need of the hour for the sustainable and cleaner steel industry, according to Madhulika Sharma, Chief Corporate Sustainability, Tata Steel.

- Tamajit Pain

Right and scalable technology, appropriate policy guidance by government, access to finance to fund transition, willingness of customers to pay for cleaner products and infrastructure for use of new technologies are the need of the hour for the sustainable and cleaner steel industry, according to Madhulika Sharma, Chief Corporate Sustainability, Tata Steel. In a free-wheeling interview with Steel Insight’s Tamajit Pain, she said the right policy guidance to incentivize the steel producers to commit to decarbonization and create demand for low carbon embodied steel is key for transition of Indian Steel sector. Steel companies will have to invest significantly for piloting and scaling up near-zero technologies like the use of Hydrogen as an alternative to carbon and carbon capture for mitigation of its high carbon footprint. Collaboration is also the need of the hour and the transition can be accelerated by inter-sectoral collaboration.

There is a general trend towards adoption of decarbonisation for sustainable growth. How do you see steel players gearing up and what are the challenges?

With the run up to COP26, countries like China, Korea, and Japan have come out with their net-zero commitments. China has announced its commitment of net zero by 2060, Japan and Korea by 2050. Till now Asian countries were not there in net zero commitment. These were largely being led by the European countries.