| Abstract |
Steel has historically been central to modern economies, synonymous of growth and progress. Modern society would be impossible without steel: Europe 's reconciliation after World War II was built on unified coal and steel industries. Today the steel sector in Europe has an annual turnover of EUR 166 billion and it is responsible for 1.3% of the European Gross Domestic Product. Moreover, steel is the essential material for a circular economy, not only for its recyclability, but because it is a material that remains available to be reintroduced into a production process in order to give birth to products or materials (permanent material). Therefore, the sector has been recognized as one of three areas, along with space and defense, where the European Commission proposes specific policy measures. In the last decades, the European steel industry has been under severe pressure, squeezed between brutal market conditions and the ever more stringent environmental regulation aiming at mitigating the climate change with the associated shift to a carbon-limited world. To face these challenges, apart from creating and maintaining a level playing field, the European steel industry has to rely on its highly skille d workforce and on its ability to deliver technological breakthroughs. The paper summaries the vision of the European Steel Technology Platform's (ESTEP) Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) to address the challenges that the steel sector faces in terms of Rese arch & Development & innovation (R&D&I) in relation to sustainable steel production. Starting from the consideration that the sector finds itself very close to the physical limits of CO2 emissions reduction from conventional steelmaking technologies, the EU steel industry has recently begun further analysis into how potentially novel solutions could achieve `deep' decarbonisation, working on the following main pathways: Carbon Direct Avoidance (CDA), which substitutes carbon with hydrogen and/or via the use of electricity Smart Carbon Usage (SCU), which further optimises carbon-based Metallurgy and applies the circular use of waste carbon in synergy with other industrial sectors and the use of carbon storage methods to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions Enhancing the recycling of steel and its by-products, helping to improve resource efficiency and reinforcing the creation of a circular economy. These targets are ambitious, and come at a cost, potentially of several billion euros. Thus, it is important to note that only joint initiatives with other industrial sectors, the EU institutions and the member states to support the necessarily time-consuming and expensive R&D, will foster the emergence of such breakthrough solutions. The `Big Scale' initiative - i.e. the work on a joint initiative on low carbon steel - is a key component, which will be needed to accelerate carbon reduction over the entire steel value chain. This should also contribute to the creation of the coveted circular economy in Europe, given the huge potential of steel. |