Advancing industrial decarbonization by assessing the future use of renewable energies in industrial processes (AID-RES) - Decarbonizing alternatives for the European Steel Industry

The Iron and Steel Industry is one of the most carbon-intensive in the European Union, and to meet the climate agreement objectives for 2050, it must dramatically reduce its environmental footprint. The present study analyzes the potential for CO2 emission reduction for this sector up to 2050. It takes into account the most promising technologies for steel production, whether they are still under development or already commercially available, and evaluates the potential for decarbonization support of renewable energies ((H2) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The process integration enables to simulate and optimize the technologies environmental performance under diverse scenarios of resource prices and electricity emission factor. It is found that production processes relaying on Electric Arc Furnaces enable a sector decarbonization of more than 54%, and up to 91% if the electrical power generation turns more renewable, down to an emission factor of 103.5 gCO2/kWhel . Top Gas Recycling Blast Furnace coupled to carbon capture might be a very interesting temporary solution for short-term retrofit of current conventional plants, and iron electrolysis technologies appear to be attractive only in some very specific conditions.