Recycling more scrap steel sounds like a win-win for a greener industrial future – but there are complicating factors.
Articles on Green steel
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Steel is an increasingly common material in Australian houses. But it’s also hugely emissions-intensive to make. Shifting to green production could help.
The foundations of our economic boom are shifting. Australia needs to position itself at the centre of new green industries.
Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005 – not the 27% cut you might have heard.
With the right leadership, Australia can turn green hydrogen’s stumbles into a global triumph for heavy industry.
Africa has the high-quality iron ore needed to make green steel along with abundant energy and a local demand set to climb ten-fold.
As other nations race to restructure their economies in line with a low-carbon future, Australia risks being left behind. An economy-shaping tax on fossil fuels is a conversation we must have.
Australian governments have invested a lot of hope in hydrogen to help drive the net zero transition, but concrete policies are urgently needed or we will lose our hydrogen advantage to other nations.
Australia has a massive opportunity to reduce global emissions by as much as 9%, all while renewing its heavy industries and economy. But to seize the opportunity, government needs to move fast.
If we put green hydrogen plants next to green iron and steelmaking, we can clean up steelmaking and boost the hydrogen industry.
Promising new green steelmaking techniques won’t work with our main iron ore exports. We must future proof this key industry.
After years of complex legal processes and misinformation, the mine’s fate hangs in the balance.
New technologies will enable steel production without coal. Australia stands to benefit greatly in the shift to green steel – if we’re ready.
We already have most technologies Australia needs to make the clean energy transition. What’s missing is a plan to deploy them at huge scale.
Australia’s abundant wind and solar resources mean we’re well placed to produce the hydrogen a green steel industry needs. But there are technical and economic challenges ahead.
The government’s latest energy plans are a failure of logic, and will lock in fossil fuel use for decades.
Australia could grab a huge chunk of the world’s steel industry, and do it on the east coast, if it gets the technologies right.
Just as thermal coal can be replaced with clean energy from renewables, we can use low-emissions steel manufacturing to phase out metallurgical coal.
Top contributors
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Senior lecturer in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Monash University
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ARC ECR Industry Fellow in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Monash University
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Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle
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Director, Centre for Ironmaking Materials Research, University of Newcastle
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Fellow, Australian National University
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Program Director, Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute
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Senior advisor, Climate and Energy College, The University of Melbourne
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Associate, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, School of Engineering, ANU, Australian National University
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Chair of Energy and Climate Governance, University of Manchester
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Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University
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Senior Fellow in Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute
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Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW
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Professor of Economics, The University of Queensland
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Senior Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University