The race for green steel

Steelmaking releases more than 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year , making it the industrial material with the biggest climate impact. To help limit global warming, the steel industry will need to shrink its carbon footprint significantly. Some major steelmakers and start-ups have started investing in alternative technologies to make steel, mostly using green hydrogen or electrochemistry to reduce iron oxides to iron. Climate policies around the globe that regulate CO 2 emissions could incentivize other steelmakers to try these different routes for making steel. If the steel industry were a country, its carbon dioxide emissions would rank third in the world, below the US and above India . Aside from churning out 1.86 billion metric tons (t) of steel last year, steelmakers generated over 3 billion t of CO 2 , corresponding to an astonishing 7–9% of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World