"Green hydrogen" or "sharp tool" for steel industry to reduce emissions
A few days ago, Salzgitter, a German steel manufacturer, announced that it would cooperate with E.ON, a German power company, and Linde, a chemical giant, to build wind H2, a wind power hydrogen production project, and gradually use "green hydrogen" to replace coke, which is widely used in steel production, so as to help the company achieve its goal of reducing emissions by 2050.
According to the planning of wind H2 project, avacon, a subsidiary of E.ON, will build a 30 MW small wind farm near Salzgitter steel plant, which will use wind power to produce hydrogen to provide hydrogen for steel plants. The total investment scale of this project is expected to reach 50 million euro, and 450 cubic meters of hydrogen can be produced per hour after it is put into operation.
It is understood that at present, most of the world's steel plants use coke to make steel, which has a large amount of carbon emissions. The wind H2 project plans to use "green hydrogen" to gradually replace the coke needed in the iron ore smelting process. Through this method, it is estimated that the carbon dioxide emissions generated in the steel production process of the company will be reduced by more than 95% by 2050.
According to the data released by the world iron and Steel Association, in addition to the power generation industry, the steel industry is the industry with the highest carbon emissions in the world, accounting for 7% - 9% of the total direct emissions of fossil energy in the world every year. According to the data released by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the total amount of carbon dioxide directly emitted by the steel industry each year is as high as 2.6 billion tons, which is even more than the total carbon emissions of cement and chemical industry in 2019. In addition, the iron and steel industry is also the "largest coal consumption industry". In recent years, as a carbon intensive industry, the iron and steel industry has also been subject to more stringent scrutiny.
In this case, the "green" transformation of iron and steel industry is imperative. Heinz Fuhrmann, chief executive of Salzgitter, said: "technically, we can use hydrogen to significantly reduce carbon emissions in steel manufacturing. The latest cooperation project is also an important step towards" climate friendly "steel manufacturing industry."
E. Johannes teyssen, chief executive of on, also pointed out that "green hydrogen" can become the "cornerstone" of the transition to alternative energy, which will also make important contributions to decarbonization industry, transportation and electric power.
In fact, in the steel industry, hydrogen has been widely used as a reducing gas, but the hydrogen used at present mainly comes from natural gas or coal, which is the so-called "gray hydrogen". In the view of the industry, in order to achieve the climate goal, it is bound to change this situation and turn more to the "green hydrogen" produced by renewable energy.
"Green steelmaking" is popular in many countries
Under the pressure of medium and long-term climate goals of various countries, just as oil and gas enterprises are actively seeking low-carbon transformation, global steel giants have also started to take action.
ArcelorMittal, a steel giant headquartered in Luxembourg, announced the goal of "net zero emissions by 2050" as early as 2019. In the following year, the company successively launched carbon reduction plans for steel, saying that it would use biomass to produce coking coal and reduce carbon emissions by carbon capture. The company said it is expected to launch 600000 tons of "green steel" to the market by the end of 2022.
Germany's steel company, tkrsenysp, announced that it would achieve its goal of "zero emission reduction by 2050" by August of last year. In addition, the company also announced that it will manufacture "zero carbon steel" and plan to use hydrogen produced from renewable energy to replace coke to make steel. By 2025, the annual output of "green steel" will reach 400000 tons, and by 2030, the annual output of "green steel" will reach 3 million tons.
In January this year, China Baowu iron and Steel Group also issued the goal of "carbon peak and carbon neutralization", saying that it will "strive to achieve carbon peak by 2023, reduce carbon by 30% by 2035 and achieve carbon neutralization by 2050". The company also plans to release a low-carbon metallurgy roadmap this year.
Huge investment is essential
According to the forecast released by the IEA, to achieve the global climate goals, including carbon dioxide emissions from heavy industries such as cement, steel and chemical industry, we need to reduce at least 50% of the current level by 2050. In the view of the industry, to achieve this goal, we need more than efficiency improvement and technological innovation, and a large amount of cost investment is the key to transformation.
According to a media article, at present, the annual production capacity of the global steel industry is about 2 billion tons. It will be a huge project to completely change the emissions of the industry, and the investment scale is likely to reach hundreds of billions of dollars. But for a long time, the iron and steel industry is facing the situation of oversupply and poor profitability. Such a high amount of capital investment will be a big problem for enterprises.
Prior to this, ArcelorMittal had predicted that if it wants to complete the company's "decarbonization" work on the European continent in accordance with the European Union's climate goals, the amount of investment required will be as high as 15-40 billion euros. Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of the company, said that the corresponding improvement of low-carbon emission technology will increase the cost of steel manufacturing, and steel consumers will have to pay for it.
The reporter quoted Martin Pei, chief technology officer of SSAB, a Swedish iron and steel enterprise, as saying: "steel is an important part of the current industrial and economic fields. If we really want to achieve the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement, it is far from enough to only improve the steel-making efficiency. The industry also needs truly breakthrough low-carbon technologies."
