Wu, Xinyi;
Meng, Jing;
Liang, Xi;
Sun, Laixiang;
Coffman, D’Maris;
Kontoleon, Andreas;
Guan, Dabo;
(2025)
Technological pathways for cost-effective steel decarbonization.
Nature
10.1038/s41586-025-09658-9.
(In press).
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Abstract
The iron and steel sector is central to national net-zero efforts but remains hard to abate1,2. Existing decarbonization roadmaps fail to guide technology choices for individual plants, given their heterogeneity and economic constraints3,4,5. Here, by integrating two global plant-level datasets and forecasted technology costs, we develop a model to identify the least-cost technology pathway for each plant worldwide in alignment with national carbon-neutrality targets. In the short term (pre-2030), energy efficiency improvements and scrap reuse are the cheapest decarbonization strategies, reducing cumulative global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 7.8 Gt and 7.2 Gt at average costs of –US$8.5 tCO2−1 and US$0.3 tCO2−1, respectively. In the long term (after 2030), smelt reduction with carbon capture is expected to become technically mature and economically viable, achieving approximately 6.0 Gt of CO2 reductions at costs of US$7–15 tCO2−1 in Chinese plants and US$26–75 tCO2−1 in plants across Japan, Korea and Europe. After 2040, green-hydrogen-based steelmaking is estimated to contribute an additional 0.3 Gt of CO2 abatement in European plants at costs of US$27–44 tCO2−1. This study tailors plant-specific least-cost technology pathways that reconcile stakeholders’ economic interests with climate objectives, enabling actionable decarbonization strategies and supporting global net-zero targets.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Technological pathways for cost-effective steel decarbonization |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-025-09658-9 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09658-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216445 |
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