November 2022 Volume 4

MATERIALS

And so, we come to industry’s role in reducing CO2 GHG emissions. U.S. CO2 emissions peaked during the 2000-2008 period at above 6000 million metric tons CO2 equivalent. Emissions since then have decreased for a variety of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic, to about 4700 million metric tons CO2 equivalent. According to the EPA, “The decrease in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion corresponded with a decrease in energy use as a result of decreases in economic, manufacturing, and travel activity in response to the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to a continued shift from coal to less carbon-intensive natural gas and renewables in the electric power sector.”

of iron and steel produced has made the industry among the highest in GHG emissions. To help achieve net-zero goals, the iron and steel sector can: • Transition to low- and no-carbon fuels and expand industrial electrification • Employ pilot demonstrations for transformative technologies such as hydrogen-steel production and carbon capture and utilization storage (CCUS) • Improve materials efficiency and increase materials circularity.” The issue of decarbonizing the manufacturing sector was revitalized on June 30, when DOE announced a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) in support of its efforts “to decarbonize the American industrial sector and move the U.S. toward net-zero carbon emissions.” Relating specifically to the decarbonization of iron and steel, this The Pursuit of Fossil-Free Steel Production in Sweden A few years ago, Harald Mix and Carl-Erik Lagercrantz had just started a company in Sweden called Northvolt to build lithium-ion battery plants and supply the European electric vehicle market. In so doing, the idea came up that it would be great advancement for sustainability if the steelmaking process could be decarbonized, given that one ton of steel produced in a blast furnace generated about 2,000 kilograms of CO2. Not ones to sit on a good idea for long, Mix and Lagercrantz found some investors and formed a company headquartered in Stockholm called H2 green steel. It was based on their belief that mitigating climate change is the biggest challenge of our time and one not to be delayed. They raised some capital and formed a management team and last year announced they would invest a large sum to meet the challenge. To that end, the company recently broke ground in Boden, northern Sweden, where they will build a large-scale steel production facility. Mix became the Chairman of H2 green steel and Lagercrantz the Vice Chairman. At its fully integrated, digitized, and circular plant in Boden, northern Sweden, H2 green steel will produce green steel, reducing CO2 emissions by up to 95 percent compared to traditional steelmaking. The challenge of near-complete decarbonization will be met by integrating one of the world’s largest electrolysis plants, powered by green hydrogen produced with fossil-free energy. “Boden is a great place to build our mill because there is an excess of renewable power generation available,” said H2 green steel’s Chief Commercial Officer, Mark Bula, an executive recruited from the U.S. “We will be building a giga-scale electrolyzer on-site that will be powered fossil-free by wind and hydro power to supplement each other and produce the green hydrogen needed to produce our first steel coil by the end of 2025 and bring 5 million tons of high quality steel annually to the market by 2030. We are a company that believes decarbonization is necessary and we’re just trying to show it’s possible.”

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Manufacturing and Decarbonization The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been involved with decarbonization efforts for a long time, having established a roadmap outlining strategies for decarbonizing our industrial sector. The Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap identified four technological efforts to reduce carbon emissions: energy efficiency; industrial electrification; low-carbon fuels, feedstocks, and energy sources; and carbon capture, utilization and storage. DOE says that these abatement technologies “are applicable across all industrial subsectors and have the capability to deliver near-term and future reductions as the GHG emissions intensity of the electrical grid decreases, technologies develop, and hard-to-abate sources are addressed. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the chemicals and petroleum refining sectors account 20 percent and 17 percent of industrial CO2 emissions, respectively. The next largest cohort was iron and steel at 7 percent. Iron and steel manufacturing is one of the most energy-intensive industries worldwide. DOE indicates that “the use of coal as a feedstock in production methods, the chemical reduction of iron oxide, and the sheer volume

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