Global Efficiency Intelligence Releases International Steel Climate Impact Report
Iron and steel manufacturing is one of the most energy-intensive industries worldwide. In addition, the use of coal as the primary fuel for iron and steel production globally means that iron and steel production has among the highest carbon dioxide emissions of any industry.
In this study Global Efficiency Intelligence conducted a benchmarking analysis for energy and CO2 emissions intensities of the steel industry among the largest steel-producing countries. Because of the difference in the composition of the steel industry across countries and the variation in the share of electric arc furnace (EAF) steel production, a single intensity value for the overall steel industry is not a good indicator of efficiency of the steel industry in a country. Therefore, in addition to calculating CO2 intensities for the entire steel industry, they also calculated separately the CO2 intensities associated with the EAF and blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) production routes in each country.
The results show that when looking at the entire steel industry, Italy, U.S., and Turkey have the lowest and Ukraine, India, and China have the highest CO2 emissions intensities among the countries/region studied. Among several reasons, this is primarily because of a significantly higher share of EAF steel production in total steel production in Italy, U.S., and Turkey.
This report is an update to a previous report titled How Clean is the U.S. Steel Industry? An International Benchmarking of Energy and CO2 Intensities.