Source: Steel Industry – The Net-Zero Industry Tracker | World Economic Forum

World Steel Association estimate of growth between 2012-2050

Clearly, this is a conflict and fundamental change is needed.

With this in mind, we have announced our ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030 – or as we call it, CN30.

Our ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030 is bold and demands a major transition from a heavy polluting industry to a modern carbon-neutral future. Climate change won’t wait so we are committed to taking action now. We don’t have all the answers, but we have a realistic, measurable and manageable path forward that will allow us to transform our production methods swiftly, steadily and economically. To reinvent the industry we believe, steel producers, policymakers and the financial community need to work together to deliver real sustainable change.

We welcome like-minds to join us on this exciting journey. We also invite you to take a look at our progress in our recent sustainability report.

LIBERTY Steel produces steel across the globe through integrated steel facilities as well as recycled scrap based Electric Arc Furnaces (EAFs)

Around 40% of our steel is produced through the EAF route which we use in Australia, Poland, the UK and the US. Using electricity, our EAFs manufacture steel products with a significantly lower carbon emission level – more than 60% less CO2 per tonne of steel – compared to those made by traditional steelmaking methods.

Recycling scrap metal as the main feedstock into our EAFs allows us to use a local resource with a very low level of embedded carbon which further reduces emissions, saves on natural resources and diverts scrap from landfill.

The other 60% of our steelmaking processes – in Australia (Whyalla), the Czech Republic (Ostrava) and Romania (Galati) – use the traditional blast furnace (BF/BOF) route. This uses carbon (primarily from coal) as the primary source of transition fuel.

To achieve our ambition to become a carbon-neutral steelmaker by 2030, we have to transition our business away from using BFs while we further reduce the carbon emissions of our EAFs through the use of renewable electrical energy.

Through this transformation we will see a shift in our global production footprint as we reconfigure primary production locations to take advantage of renewable energy, new technologies, and access to raw materials, while keeping our meltshops and rolling mills close to their markets.

Our mines in Whyalla, South Australia provide us with access to abundant high quality magnetite ore – an essential ingredient for green iron and steel production. We will unlock our vast magnetite resource and convert it into two value add premium products: magnetite concentrate; and direct reduction (DR) quality pellets for use in the Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) process.

We will use renewable electricity like wind and solar to initially produce energy to power our plants and then to produce green hydrogen, which will replace carbon as the reducing agent in the direct reduction process.  Natural gas will be a transition fuel as we move from carbon to hydrogen while commissioning and stabilising the new steelmaking processes.

We will replace our BFs with DRI units and our BOFs with EAFs. The DRI units will start with natural gas as the transition fuel but will then move to using Hydrogen when it is available. The product produced through the DRI units can also be converted to Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI), which can safely and affordably be transported across the globe as a bulk material.