Journal article
Global green hydrogen-based steel opportunities surrounding high quality renewable energy and iron ore deposits
- Abstract:
- The steel sector currently accounts for 7% of global energy-related CO2 emissions and requires deep reform to disconnect from fossil fuels. Here, we investigate the market competitiveness of one of the widely considered decarbonisation routes for primary steel production: green hydrogen-based direct reduction of iron ore followed by electric arc furnace steelmaking. Through analysing over 300 locations by combined use of optimisation and machine learning, we show that competitive renewables-based steel production is located nearby the tropic of Capricorn and Cancer, characterised by superior solar with supplementary onshore wind, in addition to high-quality iron ore and low steelworker wages. If coking coal prices remain high, fossil-free steel could attain competitiveness in favourable locations from 2030, further improving towards 2050. Large-scale implementation requires attention to the abundance of suitable iron ore and other resources such as land and water, technical challenges associated with direct reduction, and future supply chain configuration.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-023-38123-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Article number:
- 2578
- Publication date:
- 2023-05-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-04-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1340114
- Local pid:
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pubs:1340114
- Deposit date:
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2023-05-07
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Devlin et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2023, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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