Awareness of green and low carbon in the steel industry
Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the “Guidance on the promotion of high-quality development of the steel industry”. The “Guiding Opinions” that: the steel industry is an important basic industry of the national economy, an important support for building a modern and strong country, and an important area for achieving green and low-carbon development. The “Guiding Opinions” high level to specify the overall requirements, the main tasks and safeguards, clear the main objectives to 2025, especially the tasks of green low-carbon development and specific safeguards, hit the nail on the head, for the enterprise R & D to point out the direction.
In order to implement the requirements of “accelerating the reform of ecological civilization system and building a beautiful China” put forward by the 19th National Congress and the “3060” dual carbon strategy of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and to promote green development, China Baowu released a low carbon metallurgy roadmap on November 18, 2021, and Baosteel has made a lot of attempts and explorations in green low carbon technology research and development and practice.
In October 2020, TISCO Stainless, a subsidiary of China Baowu, was rated as an ultra-low emission A-grade enterprise. Baosteel Corporation then formulated specific measures and nodes for the four bases to strive for A-grade enterprises, and planned to invest 25.28 billion yuan to implement ultra-low emission transformation through 288 projects. in December 2021, Baosteel Corporation’s Dongshan base became the first full-process ultra-low emission A-grade enterprise in Guangdong. At present, Meishan base has completed the clean transport public announcement, and Baoshan base has completed the clean transport assessment. It is expected that Baoshan base in 2022, Meishan and Qingshan base in 2023 will complete the creation of ultra-low emission class A enterprise, which will help “more than 80% of iron and steel production capacity to complete ultra-low emission transformation” in advance of the Guidance Opinions.
On June 30, 2021, in order to implement the spirit of the instruction of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on the report of China Baowu’s carbon neutral work, Baosteel established the Carbon Neutral Promotion Committee, of which Chairman Zou Jixin is the director, to coordinate and promote scientific and technological innovation, carbon data and carbon asset management in the field of green and low-carbon. Since 2015, Baosteel has invested more than 200 million yuan to carry out research on hydrogen-rich carbon cycle blast furnace relying on the 430m3 blast furnace of Baosteel, which has completed 50% oxygen content test and is undergoing equipment renovation to create test conditions for the ultimate goal of 100% oxygen content, hoping to explore a 30% carbon reduction technology route for the widely existing blast furnace-converter process in China. Meanwhile, the construction of a hydrogen-based shaft furnace with an annual capacity of 1 million tons has started at the Dongshan base with an investment of 1.8 billion RMB, providing raw materials for the first all-hydrogen zero-carbon green demonstration production line in China. Baosteel is continuing to invest in six areas of practice, including hydrogen-rich carbon recycling blast furnace, hydrogen-based shaft furnace, extreme energy efficiency, near-end shape manufacturing, metallurgical resource recycling and carbon recovery and utilization, to contribute to China Baowu’s goal of “mastering 30% carbon reduction technology by 2025, reducing carbon emissions by 30% to 1.3 tons per ton of steel by 2035, and striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The core flagship subsidiary plays a role in the goal of “mastering 30% carbon reduction technology by 2025, reducing carbon emissions by 30% to 1.3 tons per ton of steel by 2035, and striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In the recently held Sixth Plenary Committee of the Party Committee of China Baowu Group, Secretary and Chairman Chen Derong pointed out that Baowu’s values are “integrity, innovation, green, and sharing”, and proposed a target of 5% R&D intensity to provide resources for technological innovation. “Green manufacturing, green manufacturing” has become a concept that is deeply rooted in the hearts of Baowu.
In the process of developing green and low-carbon technologies, we are also aware of the huge economic and technical challenges to achieve the “double carbon” goal. Based on this consideration, China Baowu initiated the establishment of the Global Low Carbon Metallurgy Innovation Alliance, hoping to gather the R&D resources of global steel industry, upstream and downstream enterprises, universities and research institutions under the guidance and assistance of various national ministries and industry associations, to cooperate in the development of basic and forward-looking low carbon metallurgy technologies; to promote technical cooperation, technical exchange and technical transformation, to promote the engineering and industrialization of low carbon technologies, to form a steel Low-carbon value innovation chain to promote the low-carbon transformation of the iron and steel industry.
As an important basic industry with carbon as the main energy source, the direction of green and low-carbon development in the steel industry mainly includes “carbon reduction and carbon sequestration”, “electricity substitution” and “hydrogen substitution”. It is urgent to introduce measures at the national level to design a “carbon neutral” roadmap and develop an effective incentive/restraint system to promote the coordinated progress of the industry and avoid the phenomenon of “bad money driving out good money”. In the process of implementing green low-carbon technologies, green electricity generation and deployment, green hydrogen preparation and storage, and CCUS are all cross-industry technical challenges that require national top-level design and cross-industry coordination to support the low-carbon transformation of the steel industry.