In a new report sponsored by its Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has identified the U.S. steel industry as the world leader in achieving the lowest energy intensity per ton of steel produced as compared to steel industries in other nations, and the second-lowest in terms of CO2 emissions per ton of steel produced, behind only Korea. The report, Meeting Energy Efficiency and Emissions Reduction Goals in the US Steel Industry: A Need for Breakthrough Production Technologies, was released by the DOE last week

“The DOE report’s findings are extremely relevant to several important current policy discussions,” Thomas J. Gibson, president and CEO, American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), said. “First, it points out the tremendous strides the U.S. steel industry has made to lower its energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions over the past two decades. That is one of the reasons that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s unilateral regulations of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from stationary sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA) are misguided. These regulations place a substantial cost burden on the domestic steel industry, while no comparable regulations are in place for steel produced in competitor nations, such as China, where energy and environmental performance has been worse. The EPA regulations will make it less competitive to make steel in the U.S. where we have the cleanest steel industry in the world, instead pushing steel production offshore to higher emitting nations. That is why Congress must intervene to block EPA’s GHG regulations.”

The DOE report also concludes that “the U.S. steel industry has almost fully achieved the energy efficiency and carbon emission reductions that can be obtained using today’s best available technologies. Additional breakthrough steelmaking technologies and processes will be needed to achieve proposed domestic and global policy goals for energy efficiency and carbon emission reductions.” This contradicts the EPA’s Best Available Control Technology (BACT) guidance document for regulating GHG emissions from the iron and steel sector, which was issued last year. The EPA document indicated that the U.S. steel industry can achieve energy reductions of up to 27 percent for integrated mills, and up to 53 percent for electric arc furnace mills.

“This DOE report backs up what we have been telling EPA for months – its assumptions for energy efficiency opportunities in the steel industry are unrealistic and inaccurate. In recent years, the industry achieved significant efficiency gains surpassing many other industrial sectors, the kind of gains that EPA now wants us to duplicate under GHG regulations going forward,” Gibson said. “Without breakthrough technology development, the U.S. steel industry cannot make similar efficiency gains into the future, yet that is exactly what EPA is mandating that we do.”

“Finally, the report identifies the critical need for breakthrough research in the steel industry to achieve further environmental gains,” Gibson said, “significant information that should be part of the ongoing budget debate.” He said the report provides evidence of the gains that can be achieved by strengthening the federal commitment to cost-shared research programs that will enable and accelerate technical breakthroughs. The report notes that “additional breakthrough steelmaking technologies and processes will be needed to achieve domestic and global policy goals for energy efficiency and carbon emission reductions.”

The DOE report describes “breakthrough technologies that are currently being investigated in the US that could help the domestic steel industry achieve currently unattainable carbon emissions and energy intensity levels in the production of steel.” Gibson said that there needs to be greater awareness among U.S. policymakers that the governments in other nations are contributing significantly to breakthrough research for their domestic steel industries, while the U.S. government at this time is not providing any funding toward development of these essential new technologies. He cited Europe, Australia, Japan, Germany and Korea as examples where governments are investing hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D to develop breakthrough technologies.

AISI, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., serves as the voice of the North American steel industry in the public policy arena and advances the case for steel in the marketplace as the preferred material of choice. AISI also plays a lead role in the development and application of new steels and steelmaking technology. AISI is comprised of 25 member companies, including integrated and electric furnace steelmakers, and 118 associate and affiliate members who are suppliers to or customers of the steel industry.