Lei, T;
Wang, D;
Yu, X;
Ma, S;
Zhao, W;
Cui, C;
Meng, J;
... Guan, D; + view all
(2023)
Global iron and steel plant CO2 emissions and carbon-neutrality pathways.
Nature
, 622
pp. 514-520.
10.1038/s41586-023-06486-7.
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Abstract
The highly energy-intensive iron and steel industry contributed about 25% (ref. 1) of global industrial CO2 emissions in 2019 and is therefore critical for climate-change mitigation. Despite discussions of decarbonization potentials at national and global levels 2–6, plant-specific mitigation potentials and technologically driven pathways remain unclear, which cumulatively determines the progress of net-zero transition of the global iron and steel sector. Here we develop a CO2 emissions inventory of 4,883 individual iron and steel plants along with their technical characteristics, including processing routes and operating details (status, age, operation-years etc.). We identify and match appropriate emission-removal or zero-emission technologies to specific possessing routes, or what we define thereafter as a techno-specific decarbonization road map for every plant. We find that 57% of global plants have 8–24 operational years, which is the retrofitting window for low-carbon technologies. Low-carbon retrofitting following the operational characteristics of plants is key for limiting warming to 2 °C, whereas advanced retrofitting may help limit warming to 1.5 °C. If each plant were retrofitted 5 years earlier than the planned retrofitting schedule, this could lead to cumulative global emissions reductions of 69.6 (±52%) gigatonnes (Gt) CO2 from 2020 to 2050, almost double that of global CO2 emissions in 2021. Our results provide a detailed picture of CO2 emission patterns associated with production processing of iron and steel plants, illustrating the decarbonization pathway to the net-zero-emissions target with the efforts from each plant.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Global iron and steel plant CO2 emissions and carbon-neutrality pathways |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-023-06486-7 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06486-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Environmental sciences, Environmental social sciences |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10179262 |
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