Technology and Innovations

It is the economic function through which new technologies are introduced into production and consumption.

- Josh Owens

Making steel without fossil fuels

From roads to railways and the skeleton of most buildings, it is at the very heart of nearly every city on earth. Within those cities, the cars on the road, the cutlery in our kitchens, and the furniture in our offices all rely on steel production. Steel production, however, is an incredibly energy-intensive process, and the vast majority of this energy comes from fossil fuels.

Globally, steel is responsible for 7-9 percent of all direct emissions from fossil fuels .Most of those emissions come from the burning of coal, which makes up 89 percent of the energy input for blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) and 11 percent of the energy input of electric arc furnaces (EAF) .Of those two types of steel production, BFBOF is far more common, making up 75 percent of steel that is produced compared to 25 percent from EAF .

A major challenge for the steel industry in the modern era has been reducing its carbon emissions . Unfortunately, energy constitutes between 20 and 40 percent of the cost of steel production, so the reality for most major producers is that “green steel” is simply not affordable .But that could soon change, with the rapid advancements in hydrogen energy .

On Aug .31, Swedish company HYBRIT officially began a pilot program for a “fossil-free” steel making plant .Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven was there to open the plant .

This groundbreaking program aims to bring fossil free steel to the market by 2026 . It aims to replace coking coal with electricity from renewable

energy sources and hydrogen in a process that will produce steel and water as opposed to steel and carbon dioxide .