Industry Focus >>The automobile industry is a major user ofsteel. Volvo Cars said that steel is a major carbon
emitting industry, accounting for 20% to 35%of the carbon footprint of each vehicle. The
automotive industry is also concerned about thedevelopment of green steel in order to reducecarbon emission and minimize carbon taxes.
Volvo announced that it will use steel made withhydrogen to form automobiles’ body structure,making it the first automaker in the world to use
green steel. Mercedes-Benz announced that it willuse green steel in its cars by 2025.
Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that in thenext 30 years, the global steel industry will needto invest an average of US$145 billion per year inorder to "decarbonize" steel, which will increase
the cost of steel production by 30%. The mosturgent task of decarbonization for the steel industry
is to solve the problem of technical cost. Many
steelmakers still use coal-fired blast furnaces, which
is doubly carbon-intensive (coking coal is used
to absorb oxygen from iron ore, and air polluting
energy is used to heat up the blast furnace); instead,a more environmentally friendly approach is to use
DRI (direct reduced iron) as the fuel for electric arcfurnaces.

Green Steel in

the Frontline ofIncoming CBAMCBAM當前，綠色鋼鐵進行式Europe
Swedish steelmakers are now actively developing the use of hydrogenas a substitute for fossil fuels, and have succeeded in producing the world's
first green steel, which will be the first to be launched globally. Hybrit—a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, state-owned energy
company Vattenfall, and state-owned mining company LKAB—aims toreduce the carbon footprint of steel production. Hybrit uses solar andwind power equipment to generate electricity which is then used toelectrolyze water to produce hydrogen, known as green hydrogen. The
hydrogen reacts and only water vapor is produced, not carbon dioxide.
Instead of using coal, Hybrit uses hydrogen as a reducing agent insteel production. Hydrogen combines with the oxygen in iron ore toproduce only iron and water vapor. The water vapor condenses during
the process and can be recycled, thus eliminating the generation ofcarbon dioxide in the first place. Hybrit plans to expand the productionof green hydrogen steel to commercial scale by 2026, by which time itwill be ready to supply the market. This will reduce Sweden's total CO2
emission by 10% and help Finland to reduce them by about 7 percent.
In addition, another Swedish steel start-up, H2 Green Steel, expects
to start producing green steel in 2024 and to have an annual production
capacity of 5 million tons by 2030.
Besides Sweden, German steel group Salzgitter expects to provide
the first batch of green steel by the end of 2022; major steel maker
ArcelorMittal plans to build a zero-carbon plant in Spain which willproduce 1.6 million tons of green steel in 2025; and major steel makerThyssenKrupp will invest US$1.9 billion in hydrogen direct reduction.
ThyssenKrupp, a major steelmaker, has invested US$1.9 billion in a惠達雜誌

Hardware & Fastener Components - no.60/2023

For many years, steel has been one of theindustries with the highest carbon emission, and
it is also one of the first targets of EU’s Carbon
Boundary Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The
production of steel requires using large quantities ofcoal. Iron ore is put into a steel furnace, resulting iniron oxide, and then hot air is blown into the hightemperature furnace, where coke will melt ironand produce carbon dioxide. For every ton of steel
produced, nearly two tons of carbon dioxide are
emitted, making the steel industry responsible for7-8% of the world's carbon emission. Steel is themain material for fasteners. Although the researchand development of green steel has already been
explored before 2010, the development of green steel
has gained more attention in recent years as the EUcarbon tax is approaching.

041

Industry Focus >>hydrogen direct reduction system to produce green steel
without the use of rare, high-grade iron, and will produce 2.5
million tons of low-carbon steel by 2026.
In Italy, the Danieli Group, Leonardo and Saipem haveannounced a partnership to transform the steel industry intoa green one. The three companies have signed a frameworkagreement to participate in a sustainable transformation project
for the steel industry's energy-intensive 1st-level factories, andwill jointly provide technologies and services to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions from steel production.
GravitHy, a joint venture between many European andAmerican companies, announced that it will build the country's
first green steel plant in the Fos region of France in 2024, with aninvestment of €2.2 billion and an estimated capacity of 2 million
tons of direct reduced iron (DRI) per year. The plant will be fully
operational by 2027.

The U.S.
Boston Metal in the U.S. is revolutionizing the steel industry
by commercializing a patented molten oxide electrolysis (MOE)process to produce green steel, with a goal of producing 1 billion
tons. The company's MOE process uses renewable electricity toconvert all grades of iron ore into steel in an energy-efficient,
single-step process. MOE produces no carbon dioxide and does
not require the treatment of wastewater, hazardous chemicals
or precious metal catalysts.

Hardware & Fastener Components - no.60/2023

Asia
India's Tata Steel has begun its efforts to switch to greenhydrogen-based steelmaking in order to massively reducecarbon emission from steel. The company aims to reduce carbon
emission by 30% by 2030, 75% by 2035 and achieve net zero by
2050. The company has also launched a direct reduced iron (DRI)
manufacturing facility, which will begin production in 2030 andwill supply at least 200,000 tons of carbon-neutral-equivalent
steel per year in the future. The company has also launched theZeremis Carbon Lite series of low-carbon green steels, which
reduce carbon emission by 30%. For customers with higher
carbon reduction targets, Tata Steel said it can be allocatedadditional carbon reduction certificates and that these low-carbon
green steels are suitable for use in industries such as automotive,packaging and white goods.
In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been
discussing with automotive and steel industry groups to promote
green steel manufacturing processes and carbon reduction. Initial
estimates suggest that the overall investment in the steel industry
will be about JPY 10 trillion. Nippon Steel has formed an allianceof hydrogen-based reduced iron in collaboration with JFE Steeland Kobe Steel, and is working to achieve Hydrogen DirectReduction (H-DR), with trials to be launched in 2024-2025.
This technology uses only hydrogen to extract iron from lowgrade iron ore which contains less iron, and then melts it in anelectric furnace.
South Korean steel companies are also actively developing newfurnaces. Dongkuk Steel has initiated research on ultra electric044 惠達雜誌 Copyright owned by Fastener World / Article by Dean Tsengfurnace, and plans to complete the research by 2028, focusing on
the development of energy-cycling ultra processing technology
to improve the efficiency of electric furnaces. The key to an ultra
electric furnace is speed of operation and energy efficiency. By
speeding up operation, electricity consumption can be reduced,
thereby the reduction of carbon emission. Dongkuk Steel plans toimprove the way it preheats and loads scrap steel, and to utilize
the Eco-Arc electric furnaces, an environmentally friendly
steelmaking facility, to improve power and energy efficiency,
leading to the development of ultra electric furnaces, which
can reduce power consumption by 30%.
Hyundai Steel has the largest electric arc furnace production
capacity in Korea, at more than 10 million tons annually.
The company is working on a carbon-neutral manufacturingsystem called Hy-Cube and introducing a hydrogen-based steel
manufacturing system, a unique integrated manufacturingsystem based on hydrogen-based manufacturing process. HyCube is an advanced process that improves on the existing
electric arc furnace, providing greater flexibility in terms of raw
materials, manufacturing process, and products, and is capable ofproducing a full range of products, including rods and bars,
that were originally produced in electric arc furnaces.
POSCO plans to invest US$462.9 million to build a newelectric arc furnace with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons at
its Gwangyang plant in January 2024, which will be launched in2026. The company will push on carbon reduction by introducing
electric furnaces until hydrogen reduction refining becomescommercially viable to replace the current blast furnaces. Unlike
Europe’s direct reduced iron manufacturing that uses high-gradepellets as feedstock, POSCO's HyREX hydrogen reduced
steelmaking technology produces reduced iron directly fromiron ore fines. POSCO's green hydrogen technology will becombined with HyREX to produce steel when it is ripe.
Taiwan CSC has collaborated with Jinn Her Enterprise, amajor manufacturer in the fastener industry, and succeeded
in developing and producing 150 tons of carbon-neutral
steel, which is now actively going through various international
certifications and is expected to pass by yearend, thereby relievingpressure on fastener export for Taiwan which has an annual output
value of hundreds of billions of Taiwanese dollars.
In China, Baosteel and Schaeffler Group signed a tacticalagreement on the sustainable development of green steel. The
two companies will work together to create a green steel supply
chain in the area of steel decarbonization based on a sharedconcept of sustainable development.

Green Steel May Help
Downstream Business Owners Take
Actions for CBAM
CBAM will impose a carbon tariff on steel and fasteners
sold from other countries to the EU. In many countries fastenersuppliers are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which
are relatively weak in terms of their ability to reduce carbon
emission. If upstream steel manufacturers can provide green steel,it will help downstream suppliers calculate their carbon fees andreduce carbon emission.