Six international steel manufacturers, including AISC members Nucor Corporation and Steel Dynamics, Inc. (SDI), have formed a new coalition to establish and promote a global steel standard that leads toward a cleaner future. The coalition, named the Global Steel Climate Council (GSCC), is a nonprofit association dedicated to sharing best practices, establishing standards, and advocating for carbon emissions reductions by members of the steel industry.
The specific purposes of the GSCC include supporting technology-agnostic reduction methods that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the global steel industry; creating a system boundary that includes Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions; and adopting a science-based glidepath to achieve a 1.5 degree Celsius scenario by 2050.
“Steel is essential for our economies, including the world’s essential infrastructure,” Mark D. Millett, chair, president, and CEO of founding member SDI, said in a press release. “This new standard will accelerate the actual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and provide key decisionmakers with accurate data to make informed decisions.”
A central assertion of the GSCC is that any agreement should focus on the amount of emissions generated, not on how steel is made. High-emission steelmakers around the world support a “sliding scale” standard in which two steel products could be classified as equally “green,” even though one created multiple times more carbon emissions than the other. The GSCC argues that such a standard would set greenhouse gas emission standards ceilings up to nine times higher for extractive versus recycled products, which they argue would ultimately penalize electric arc furnace producers and permit the erroneous labeling of higher-emission steel as “green.”
“We have the technology to reduce carbon emissions in steel production by 70% today,” said Leon Topalian, chair, president, and CEO of founding member Nucor. “The global industry needs to build on the innovation that has already led to cleaner steel production in the United States because the green and digital economies around the world are going to be built with steel, and the steel they are built with matters.”
The GSCC includes more than 20 members and supporters who are steel manufacturers, trade associations, end users, scrap metal suppliers, and non-governmental organizations. Find out more about the coalition at globalsteelclimatecouncil.org.