Climate targets by major steel companies: An assessment of collective ambition and planned emission reduction measures

This article systematically analyses the status, robustness, and potential impact of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets set by the largest steel producer companies as of mid-2022. We assessed the 60 largest steel companies by volume, covering more than 60% of global steel production. Data on company-level greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and emission reduction measures were collected from publicly available documents. We found that only 30 companies have their own greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of varying timeframes between 2025 and 2060. Even when excluding the 15 Chinese state-owned companies that are under the national 2060 net zero target, 15 companies had no emission reduction targets. Twenty-one companies had long-term targets (2040 or after), of which 18 were net zero emission targets; all but one also had interim targets. If all climate targets of the 30 companies with a target are achieved, CO2 emissions could be up to 10% lower in 2030 and up to 43% lower in 2050 in comparison to a baseline scenario. Assuming a gradual increase in global crude steel demand from 1.9 Gt in 2019 to 2.5 Gt in 2050 and assuming similar trends for the rest of the global iron and steel sector as observed for the 60 companies, we estimate that the current ambition of the global iron and steel sector on emission reductions would lead to a reduction of 38% to 53% by 2050 from 2019 levels (3.4 GtCO2 to 1.6–2.1 GtCO2), or compared to a 34% to 39% reduction in a baseline scenario in 2050. Steel companies are also lagging in setting clear emission reduction plans to achieve their targets. We found that 14 out of the 30 steel producers with targets did not provide an emission reduction plan. The most popular measures among the 16 companies that identified at least one measure to achieve their target in their emission reduction plans were hydrogen-based DRI (n=14), enhanced use of renewable electricity (n=13) and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCU/S) for blast furnaces (n=9). While it is encouraging that the steel companies have started acting toward long-term deep decarbonisation, our findings suggest that there is a long way ahead and the action needs to be accelerated considerably.