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Carbon-Neutral Steel Production and Its Impact on the Economies of China, Japan, and Korea: A Simulation with E3ME-FTT:Steel

Authors :
Pim Vercoulen
Soocheol Lee
Xu Han
Wendan Zhang
Yongsung Cho
Jun Pang
Source :
Energies, Vol 16, Iss 11, p 4498 (2023)
Publication Year :
2023
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2023.

Abstract

The iron and steel industry is a large emitter of CO2 globally. This is especially true for the iron and steel industries in China, Japan, and Korea due to their production volumes and the prevalence of carbon-based steel production. With few low-carbon and commercially available alternatives, the iron and steel industry is truly a hard-to-abate sector. Each of the countries of interest have committed to a net-zero future involving the mitigation of emissions from steel production. However, few studies have investigated the means by which to achieve decarbonization beyond the inclusion of price signalling policies (e.g., carbon tax or emission trading schemes). Here, we use E3ME-FTT:Steel to simulate technology diffusion in the ISI under several policy environments and we investigate the likely impacts on the wider economy. The results show that penalizing carbon intensive processes can incentivize a transition towards scrap recycling, but it is relatively unsuccessful in aiding the uptake of low carbon primary steelmaking. A combination of support and penalizing policies can achieve deep decarbonisation (>80% emission reduction compared with the baseline). Mitigating the emissions in the iron and steel industry can lead to economic benefits in terms of GDP (China: +0.8%; Japan: +1.3%; Korea: +0.1%), and employment (Japan: +0.7%; Korea: +0.3%) with China, where job losses in the coal sector would negate job gains elsewhere, as the exception.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
19961073
Volume :
16
Issue :
11
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Energies
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.bcf2608cec424b978a7c19309338110b
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/en16114498