Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. Or support our Kickstarter campaign! Here at CleanTechnica, we talk a lot about building things, but it’s not very often that we dig into the raw materials they’re made of. The reality is that many of the raw materials used ... [continued]
The trouble with green steel is that coal has like 3 uses in steel production - it’s not just used to heat the metal but also becomes part of the steel itself. There are alternatives but you’re having to replace 1 thing with 3 and it ends up being ridiculously energy intensive, so unless your grid is made up exclusively of renewables you’re really just moving the CO2 production around. Especially as most of the demand is additional on top of regular steel production, we’re already trying to switch to renewables but this pushes that target further away.
Really green steel, much like green hydrogen, seems driven more by marketing than it being a sound engineering decision.
The trouble with green steel is that coal has like 3 uses in steel production - it’s not just used to heat the metal but also becomes part of the steel itself. There are alternatives but you’re having to replace 1 thing with 3 and it ends up being ridiculously energy intensive, so unless your grid is made up exclusively of renewables you’re really just moving the CO2 production around. Especially as most of the demand is additional on top of regular steel production, we’re already trying to switch to renewables but this pushes that target further away.
Really green steel, much like green hydrogen, seems driven more by marketing than it being a sound engineering decision.