September 15, 2021 – EU steel producers do not manage the green transformation. Traditional blast furnaces would have to be shut down by 2033. Technology unable to save more than 30% CO2 by 2050. 96% of EU flat steel production on the brink of extinction? While the European Commission tries to keep dirty foreign steel products out of the EU with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and creates a Safeguard 2.0, the domestic steel industry is not willing to change.
EU steel producers fail to achieve green transformation
European steelmakers are burning through their carbon budgets too quickly and currently have just under 26% of their available emissions left. Moreover, all traditional steelmaking processes (BF-BOF) would have to be stopped by 2033 at the latest, otherwise the goals of a Net Zero by 2050 cannot be achieved. This is the conclusion of Industry Tracker’s just-released report, Steeling for Net Zero.
EC protects obsolete and dirty steel technologies with CBAM
So it seems like a mockery when steel makers are given billions of euros during the German parliamentary election campaign to overhaul completely obsolete equipment that can only achieve a maximum CO2 reduction of 30% by 2050 and should actually be scrapped. Or the European Commission wants to levy carbon taxes on dirty foreign products at the EU’s external borders. E.g. on products, which are produced in the EU to 96% from obsolete blast furnaces. But dirty raw materials are allowed to cross the borders without CO2 tax.
Subsidies only for mega corporations
“While the European small and medium-sized enterprises (SME: 84 million employees), which have 420 times as many employees as the steel producing industry (200,000 employees), have to finance their further development out of their own pockets, individual mega corporations, some of which also have their majority shareholders outside the EU, will have to be subsidized with tax money. It should be clear for a long time, it is not about the green future of our long sick planet, but 100% about political interests,” Thorsten Gerber, CEO of Gerber Group said in a statement today.
More on “The lie of green steel” coming soon.
US inflation: base metals react mixed
After the U.S. inflation numbers came in much lower than expected, Asian commodity markets reacted with slight losses. On the Western commodity exchanges, however, they trended with gains this morning. On the SHFE (-0.06%) and LME (+0.45%), the nickel reacted rather hardly. For aluminum it went at the SHFE by just under 1.55% downward, at the LME however by 1.56% upward.
Source: lme.com, shfe.com.cn
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